True Savor

[Risotto with Roasted Butternut Squach - recipe here, on Patent and the Pantry]

Searching for seasonal recipes to fill our local quota is almost half the fun for this encounter with CSA. I have 99 feeds in my bloglines (excessive, maybe) - crafty, creative people I admire and glean inspiration from. At least a third of these relate to some form of cookery. I LOVE to cook - I love to admire other's cooking and stow away recipes for an adventerous rainy day. I even considered culinary school for about a day, before I saw what kind of student loans I'd be racking up. At the time I also saw my gluten intollerance (celiac?) as a limiting factor - how would I get through culinary school if I couldn't taste and eat most of the things I'd be whipping up? My oh my, how wrong I was. These days I see it as a challenge, a beautiful adventure, with ups and downs (both in the form of my breads lately - some rise, some fall flat into a doughy mess reminicent of playdough). But I digress...

Our most recent recipe success came in the form of a creamy, autumnal, Risotto. As we had a lovely butternut squash sitting on the table, from Erehwon, practically begging to be a part of this creative process - the above recipe seemed fitting. Talk about comfort food. Taking the risotto off the heat to stir in butter and parmesan - and suddenly, smelling Italy. I'd eaten my share of Risotto for three weeks in the summer of 2008, and it was lovely to know I'd done something right - it had the right aroma, if nothing else. Delightful - will certainly be a family favorite - I beg you to try it.

Here is our final Wellhausen delivery of the season - the farm was able to squeeze one more week out of the crops and gave us the biggest spaghetti squash to date, a huge bag of potatoes, several yummy apples, some radishes, a bag of arugula salad, and some farmer's cheese we ordered from a local dairy and sent via Wellhausen.



Remember the apples we had such big plans for? They've now been a tart, applesauce, an afternoon snack, and spiced apple jam! Home made gluten free bread, hot out of the oven, spread of apple jam - heavenly desert.


I am so thankful for these days. Taking the earthy's bounty, worked with the hands of our neighbor, entrusted to our care, and in turn forming it into the very nourishment to our bodies and our spirits. How satisfying to simply make good food, and to enjoy it together in our home. This is not the typical American perspective - taking the time to make and savor our food. Annie Dillard describes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek a blind patient's description of lemonaid as square, because it pricked their tounge, the way a cube had pricked their finger. When is the last time we really felt lemonaide prick our tounge? It seems many of us have taken to eating and drinking too quickly to even taste our foods. Upon the idea of making pickles last week, I sat amongst several who were shocked and almost bothered - all of the sudden we're taught to think this use of time would be a waste? Backwards, these days. This terrible construct of time has ruined us - time is now an asset, and we are to make the most of it. Perhaps we should take the advisement of good uncle Henry - "He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise." Henry David Thoreau

-E