Fall Flavours

Discovering fall flavours by Angel G.

This year, I�m trying to eat in season. I�m doing this because I want to reduce the energy and associated carbon dioxide emissions needed to grow and transport the food I eat and to reconnect myself with nature�s cycles.

It was easy enough to eat seasonally in spring and summer, given the variety of produce grown in these seasons. But as fall stretches nearer to winter, it starts to get trickier. One particular seasonal ingredient that I�ve experimented with is squash. So far, I�ve tried spaghetti squash, acorn squash and pumpkin; they all turned out very well.

Learning to cook with a new ingredient is always a learning process. Last fall when my daughter was a year old, I started to make all her food myself. I decided to try my hand at cooking squash for her. The squash was very difficult to cut open and I did not wait long enough for it to cool before getting it into the food mill, burning myself in the process. So this year, I�m careful to let the squash cool before handling!

Cutting spaghetti squash is also difficult but otherwise it is easy enough to prepare. I seed the squash, drizzle olive oil and season the inside with salt and pepper. Next, I put the squash, inside face-down on a pan, in the oven at 400 degrees F for 45 minutes. You can also cook squash in the microwave on high for 12 to 15 minutes. This is a more energy efficient though somewhat less delicious preparation method. After the squash has cooked, let it cool. I scrape the inside with a fork and it comes out looking like spaghetti: very cool! I take this �spaghetti� and fry it in a pan for 3 to 4 minutes with a tablespoon each of butter and olive oil and 2 cloves of minced garlic. It is soooo delicious!

I bake acorn squash in much the same way but instead of drizzling olive oil on it I brushed it with butter. When it is done and still hot, I just pop it on a plate and sprinkle it with brown sugar. Another success!

I came up with my method of preparing pumpkin after a brain storm. I took my pumpkin carving kit and used it to cut around the pumpkin width-wise. This made cutting it open much easier! I baked it like I do the spaghetti and acorn squashes, and again, it came out looking great. I scraped out the inside and blended it smooth. A small pumpkin makes 2 cups of pumpkin puree. This is a good quantity to make a pumpkin pie, which I did by following a recipe I found on the internet. I didn�t enjoy it as much as I hoped but again, it was my first time trying to make one.

There are other squashes and winter vegetables I would still like to try and for which I would welcome easy recipes from other PERC volunteers.

~For those interested in finding out what foods are available when, a listing of seasonal fruit and vegetable in Ontario can be found on the Foodland Ontario website at: http://www.foodland.gov.on.ca/english/availability.html