Bountiful Fall Food

September is the transition month for us – from summer to fall. At the beginning of the month there were still tomatoes in our CSA share. Now we have lots of leafy greens (mizuna, arugula, kale, bok choi, lettuce, cilantro, great beans) with color variety from peppers, winter squash, and garlic. There are so many ways to prepare these goodies.

I always cook the winter squashes whole (pricking the skin with a fork) then take out the seeds just before I eat the first serving. Left overs are easy to use up. I like spaghetti squash in salads and stir fry. Any leftover acorn squash, sweet dumpling or butternut squash is well suited for making muffins or custard.

One of my husband’s favorite sides for meat loaf of hamburger patties is sautéed peppers, onions, and garlic. I like the peppers in salads but recently have used them all in the side dish – the colorful peppers are the highlight of the plate.

Of course – sometimes all the bounty is overwhelming and I revert to my favorite snack, anytime of year: popcorn. We don’t buy the packages of microwave popcorn anymore since the Nordic Ware bowl for popping the kernels in the microwave works very well for us. When I am dieting, I only add a little salt. Yesterday (pictured), it was buttered and salted!

Raw, steamed, stir fried, baked…I like these fall veggies so many ways. I am savoring the bounty and fresh flavoring now - trying not to think about when the CSA will be done for the year at the end of October.

Onions in the Chaos Garden

There are onions blooming around the base of the sycamore in the chaos garden. I cut the green parts as chives when I remember but there have been some that have gone to seed  for the past several years so I have more plants every season.

Now there are enough to get every stage of the flower heads in one photoshoot. They start out with a cluster of buds.

They do not all open at one time (there is a blurry coneflower adding color in the background for this flower head). At first it looks like the flowers are going to be overly crowed.

But then – some of the stems that support the individual flowers elongate.

There still seem to be a large number of buds when the flower head looks like a miniature bouquet.

The new buds hide underneath the flowers that have already opened.

And that is the state of the chaos garden onions in early September!