Eating seasonally

Zoë’s Carrot Souffle

My folks came to visit yesterday and with the windy cold weather ended up spending the night, unexpectedly. We threw together dinner at the last minute of pork chops, cauliflower, leftover carrot soup from lunch, and popovers. It was unintentionally a very farm-y dinner even in January. The carrots, onions, garlic, cauliflower, tomatoes, and hot pepper, were all Old Shaw Farm and the pork was from the half pig that we trade a CSA share to our friends the Zschaus for and which is at least partly fed on Old Shaw veggie scraps.

We're still eating tons of farm produce. Carrots, we still have lots of carrots in our walk in cooler. And we all really love carrots. I once ate so many carrots that I turned orange!! I finally tried Zoë’s Carrot Souffle, and it is truly awesome. Souffle makes me think fancy, elegant, puffy. But Zoe's carrot souffle is denser, softer, almost pudding like. It is so good. Carrot soup, grated carrot salad, carrot cake, raw carrots, cooked carrots, I love them. I guess because we eat so much mesclun and other summery things in season, that I am not actually missing them, at least not yet.

And I've gotten better at filling the freezer with stuff we will actually want to eat in midwinter. Frozen collard greens are awesome. Just reheated in a pan with some butter, so good. And I have yet to find the upper limit on how much tomatoes I should put up. I mean our family can always eat as many tomatoes as I can put up. Since we have to turn on the big freezer anyway for the pig, I just freeze the tomato puree (rather than can). Also salsa.

And this year I did four big jars of dried sun golds. So good. Like candy good. When I was doing them last summer, Waverly would always ask to eat them then, and I would say well, you can have a few, but these are for the winter. Eat the fresh ones. It was so great a few weeks ago when I found them in the closet and gave some to Waverly. I said "Now it's winter. You can eat as many as you want!!" She eats them every day!!