I didn’t grow up eating pumpkins or even squash really. We did have some summer squash like zucchini fairly often, but never any winter squashes like sugar pumpkins or this gorgeous kobucha squash. As an adult who’s interested in fresh produce and happens to live in the northeastern United States, I couldn’t stay away from winter squash for very long! My CSA produced a few great specimens this year but I had no idea what to do with them. Thankfully my fellow CSA members and a few Tweets for help came to the rescue!

Here are step-by-step instructions on processing a pumpkin/squash and toasting the seeds, enjoy!

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Post tags: pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, squash

If you’ve been keeping up with the news in the northeast of the US, you know that a fungus called “late blight” (or “early late blight”) has decimated the tomato crop here. This Op-Ed piece by Dan Barber in the New York Times brought it all home for me: Stone Barnes lost more than half of its tomato crop! In Manhattan, it’s nearly impossible to find decent tomatoes this summer. I’m incredibly bummed about it because I so look forward to the delicious juicy tomatoes that appear in the markets every summer. But this year? This year, all I’m seeing is crumbly-textured hothouse tomatoes that don’t live up to their names. It’s depressing!

The picture above is of the single tomato I managed to grow on my windowsill this summer. My apartment doesn’t get enough light to really grow food in the windowsill anyway, but this year especially (with all the rain), there was no chance anything was going to grow well. My basil plant has looked half-dead all summer, too. Of course my tomato doesn’t have the blight, but it easily could have gotten it.

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When I went up to New Haven, CT a few weeks ago, my mother had the brilliant idea of having a mid-day lobster boil for lunch.  Apparently the New Haven farmer’s market has a stand that sells live local lobsters for a very good price.   Boiling lobsters is a new thing for my parents, because they’ve only had lobsters cooked Cantonese style or perhaps in an occasional bisque or as lobster thermidor.

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Post tags: lobsters, Seafood

I’m sure if you’re reading this that you probably do what I do when you travel: you look for food-related souvenirs!

Last weekend I was in Vermont attending our friends’ wedding, and my only plan other than “go to wedding” was “buy maple syrup!” Now I know I can get maple syrup in NYC, and that I can even get Vermont maple syrup here, but I wanted to get it from the source. In my imagination I was hoping to find a small distribution to support (preferably with hand-lettered labels) . . .

We ended up stopping at a roadside stand called Mom & Pop’s to get this dark maple syrup. We felt like we’d found a little unknown jem when two boys came out of the barn to ring us up (seriously!). That feeling was crushed when they handed us a business card with their URL on it and told us we could order online once we got home . . . oh well. Guess everyone’s online now! Should you want your own Mom & Pop’s syrup, check out their charming website! At least you can save yourself the long drive up there.

The other Vermont thing I bought was a total fluke: We stopped in a small coffee shop on our way back to the city to refuel and they happened to be selling all sorts of locally-made canned items. It took me a long time to settle on this Apple Cider Caramel Sauce because everything looked so good. What sold me was the serving suggestion on the side of the jar that said to eat it over ice cream — YUM!

And wouldn’t you know it? They have an online store, too.

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Post tags: caramel sauce, food souvenirs, maple syrup

When I brought everything home (soaking wet due to yet more rain here in soggy NYC) after picking up my share at the park, I laid everything out on the counter to figure out just what I had and that’s when I realized: I didn’t have enough room to store all these veggies! Our apartment isn’t small by Manhattan standards, but it’s definitely not big and we only have a 3/4 size fridge. Oh and it’s a rental, so no way am I upgrading!

What’s a girl to do but try to eat through the CSA share as quickly as possible?

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© Ivete for A Chef's Daughter, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: CSA, CSA membership, fava beans, radishes, veggies

photo courtesy of the Tribeca CSA

I’m so excited! Just dropped off my payment for the Tribeca CSA this morning and I get to pick up my first distribution next Tuesday! Even though I’d been flirting with the idea of joining a CSA for a while, I never found one that was convenient enough to do so I always put it off. Then I recently stumbled across a page full of links to Manhattan CSA’s and on a whim, looked for one near my office . . . and found the brand-new Tribeca one! It’s not really that close to my office, but it’s close enough for me to be able to make the afternoon pickups once a week.

Looks like I’ll be joining Flour Girl’s Cooking Away my CSA Challenge now, too!

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Post tags: CSA membership, vegetables

It took me a week of obsessing to buy these cherries. The first time I saw gorgeous cherries in the supermarket, it was at a Dean & Deluca, whose prices are always prohibitevely high (Morel’s were $75 per pound there last week!). The display looked so amazing that I almost broke down and paid the $9/lb they were asking, but then I came to my senses and walked right out. I then saw gorgeous cherries at Gourmet Garage for the slightly-more-reasonable price of $6.99/lb, but I still couldn’t bring myself to buy them. They were gorgeous and looked juicy-delicious, but they just seemed too expensive to justify. It’s not like I don’t have an extra $7 lying around, it’s more the principle, you know?

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Post tags: cherries, fruit, new york prices