Week 19: Eat Like a Farmer

It's almost November, and I think we've all had real frost now! That picture up top is actually frost on our rowcover! As we get into November you'll notice a definite shift towards root and storage crops with your greens. There's no need to eat these vegetables the week you receive them--roots like carrots and beets will last quite a while in a bag in your fridge; sweet potatoes and winter squash keep well in a cool, dark place.

Although some will last, there's often an urgency or obligation associated with cooking up of all the vegetables. Making a splendid recipe certainly requires some thought and effort, but I think the baseline goal of using everything up before it's too late requires much less stress.

When I come home from the farm after a long day, I usually have a lot of the same vegetables you see every week and I'm not about to look up a recipe. My go-to, easy way to stuff vegetables into a meal is...well, basically to do just that. An entire bunch of kale fits into tomato sauce for pasta, peppers hide in morning eggs, and all sorts of roots can get cubed and roasted in a jumble all together. Really, almost anything can disappear into tomato sauce, or inside a quesadilla, or atop a pizza. A pot of lentils boiling will consume the most surprising quantities of produce.  Often I'll take out the largest frying pan and cook up as many vegetables as can fit then add them to lentils that night, eggs the next morning, and be glad to find the rest in the fridge later in the week.

The point of the matter is that cooking doesn't have to be super involved. It can be slightly inventive each time while you still adhere to a self-created norm that works for you, and then you can experiment when you have time. Use whatever you have. If the vegetables get cooked, they'll get eaten.