Skip to main content

Fog and a Recipe

A thick fog has descended over the Valley this week.  At night it swirls around the trees, houses and cars on the street, imparting an eerie stillness to the neighborhood.  For the past few mornings, the fog hasn't lifted in South Sutter County, imparting a mental fuzziness which requires that I consume ever more coffee. 
The weather makes it a good time of year to bake and make some soup.  I've included a recipe below of a really tasty winter squash soup I cooked last night. 
First Apple Pie I've ever baked

Fall colors on 2nd Ave, Oak Park, Sacramento

Fall Gardening Projects

The gardening never stops in the Central Valley

My roommate brought masa from LA--it made delicious tortillas
Here's the recipe for the soup I made.  I adapted it from one I learned from Sandra Morales, who was the parent liason at Park Elementary School where I taught for almost four years.  We cooked the soup on a family day around 3 years ago, and enjoyed it with homemade tortillas.  Sandra is an excellent cook and a truly wonderful person.  So here's the recipe

Ingredients needed:

one medium green kabocha squash (or similar winter squash)
one medium yellow onion
four medium carrots
four small sweet red peppers (i used some from my pepper garden in Woodland)
one or more poblano-type peppers (add more for more heat)
1 tbs olive oil (or other cooking oil)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp chile pasilla powder
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 pinch cinammon
three cloves garlic
four medium red potatoes
one quart chicken or vegetable stock
3 cups water
fixin's: tortillas, queso fresco, avocado
Winter Squash at Let Us Farm, Oakville, WA Nov 2010
Directions
  1. Select, wash and bake in the oven at 375 degrees until soft, one medium green kabocha squash, or other similar Winter Squash. Make sure to poke a few holes in the squash with a knife or fork. 
  2. Finely chop onion, carrot, sweet pepper and poblano pepper
  3. Heat 1tbs olive oil at medium-low temperature in a dutch-oven type soup pot, add onion, carrots and peppers, stir occasionally to prevent burning
  4. Finely chop garlic
  5. After 5 minutes, add garlic, cumin and pasilla chile powder to soup pot
  6. Saute for 1 minute, then add stock, turn heat to high
  7. Chop potatoes into 1/4 inch cubes, add to soup pot
  8. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer, add ground pepper and pinch of cinnamon
  9. Remove skin and seeds from baked green kabocha and add squash 'meat' to soup
  10. Add two cups water, simmer until squash is soft
  11. Remove chunks of squash, carrot, potato, onion and pepper from soup and puree in blender or cuisine-art.  Return to soup pot and repeat until desired smoothness is reached.  
  12. Add water until desired thickness is reached, 
  13. Add salt to taste then simmer for 10 minutes
  14. Serve hot, add crema mexicana to individual bowl if richer soup if desired
Author's serving suggestions: get some fresh corn masa for tortillas, and make fresh tortillas.  Cut up some avocado and queso fresco, wrap in warm homemade tortilla, take a bite and dip it in the soup.  You won't be disappointed!

Squash soup, with some tasty fixins: avocado, queso fresco, homeade tortilla

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

From the cab of a John Deere 8410

Ready for another day of field work Spending long days in the cab of a John Deere 8410 belted tractor gives me a lot of alone time. When I'm not staring at the sheaths of earth left tossed up by the powerful steel disks in tow behind the tractor, I watch the rice trucks on Highway 99, which runs next to the field, or I observe the chickens, cranes and the crows as they feast on insects unearthed by cultivation. And I wonder how of all things I ended up driving a tractor on a farm in South Sutter County. It is because I spent these recent days alone on the tractor--and because Fall is the season for remembering and for contemplation of life and death-- that I have resurrected up this blog yet again. Sutter County Mornings I could go back years, trying to figure out how I ended up where I am, but a good starting point would be the Summer of 2009, when I began my fourth year as the Nutrition Education Site Coordinator, aka 'Garden Teacher' at Park Elementary

Support the Lagartillo School Garden Initiative

As I spend a quiet Saturday reading, writing and cooking beans, my mind drifts back to the month I spent in Nicaragua. I've lost track of how much time it's been since I returned from Central America, but I know I've been back for well over a month. At work, people are counting down the weeks before our spring break--four more to go. I am thinking ahead of projects to do in the school garden where I work once spring arrives, which here in the Bay Area will be soon. I am also thinking of another school garden project--the one in Lagartillo, the community in Nicaragua where I spent a month studying Spanish this past winter vacation. When I was in Lagartillo, some of the community elders spoke of starting a garden project at the school. A nonprofit organization that supports initiatives for women and children in Nicaragua, Project Sonrisas (http://www.projectsonrisas.org/) is working with the community in Lagartillo to help make the project a reality. To quote the Pro

Return from a Rugged Land

Ok so it's been a while since I've done any blogging. But I am on the move and have much to write about, so here I go again. About a month ago, back in February, I left my job teaching Nutrition and Garden at Park Elementary in Hayward, CA. It was a sad farewell, and I will miss many students, parents and staff there, but I was ready to move on and experience new challenges, adventures and opportunities to grow, learn and have fun. I packed up my stuff in boxes, loaded my car with supplies and headed east for the high deserts of the Navajo Nation, specifically the contested partition lands of Black Mesa. The history of the Hopi-Navajo land dispute and it's relationship to the coal interests is a complicated one. At the center of it lies Black Mesa, a rolling plateau of sagebrush and pinon and juniper forests, the traditional home of many Dine (Navajo) sheepherding families. Under their lands lie some of the largest coal deposits in the U.S. For decades, the coal in