Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I ordered a koginut squash from What's Good because it's a variety I hadn't even heard of.

cattitude cooked this for dinner tonight. When he sliced it open, it looked like a very orange acorn squash. He prepared it the way we usually cook squash: halved, baked cut side down, and then when it's almost ready, take it out of the oven, turn it over. put in butter and maple syrup, and bake for a couple of minutes before taking it out of the oven again and serving it.

We both liked it: the flavor is similar to acorn squash but a bit more intense. It's a little stringier (though still not very stringy), and Cattitude notes that the prep was a bit more work, in scraping out the seeds and other stringy bits from the cavity.

We will probably get more of these, if the opportunity presents itself.

I got over-enthusiastic online about ten days ago, when I got a chance to order some plant starts, and ordered six cucumber starters, three each of two varieties. Which is probably twice as many as I reasonably need or have room for.

Last Wednesday, I got an email saying my order had been shipped, followed by one saying it would go out on June 1. Prompted by jenett's post, I ordered two tomato plants, and one parsley, from Burpee; those will probably get here around June 1.

So, I'm looking around for someone who will deliver garden supplies, in small quantities, to Belmont, Mass. I may also ask a couple of the neighbors if they have anything to spare.

cattitude and I walked over to the Somerville Winter Farmers' Market this morning. It's a good market, with many vendors and a fair variety of things. Yes, it's a winter market, so they have radishes and onions but no lettuce or tomatoes, and apples were the only fruit. We got a radish that actually tastes like something, from a vendor who was happily giving out sample slices of different kinds of radish, carrots, and probably other things. (The first radish he offered me, after I said I was looking for something with noticeable flavor, was spicier than I really liked.) I had a brief conversation with a fellow shopper about the fact that his sign described one variety as "psychedelic," presumably just for how colorful it is; I might or might not want an actually psychedelic salad vegetable, but I would definitely want to be informed before eating it.

The other novelty was a cucumber-spice shrub; I liked it when I tasted a sample, and will now see whether I use it as much, or in the same ways, as the ginger shrub I get from someone at the Boston Public Market.

We were pleased to see some reasonable-sized rutabagas, so we bought a few, and Cattitude is planning a beef stew.

We also bought Macoun apples (after tasting and not liking a variety whose name I have already forgotten, which I was told was a Honeycrisp×Fuji cross), two varieties of beets, cheese, a package of the frozen Moroccan chickpea and carrot ravioli, and a mini chocolate Bundt cake, part of which I ate for second breakfast.

There are far fewer winter markets than summer/fall ones, so I'm pleased to have this one so close to where we're living, and that it started up so soon. The very last regular market in the Boston area was in Davis Square, the day before Thanksgiving—i.e., ten days ago—and I think this may be the first winter market to start up. (Last winter I went to the much smaller winter market in Charles Square a few times, and the large Cambridge one only at the very end of the season.)

I went to the nursery this morning, in search of cucumber plants, and wound up with a pot containing three little Diva cucumber seedlings, and another pot with a slightly larger Black Krim tomato plant. Black Krim isn't my favorite tomato, but I couldn't find Paul Robeson last year, and Black Krim is almost as good, in the same direction (though it doesn't get extra points for a cool name).

I planted the cucumbers this morning, in the small raised bed next to the driveway; I should get a cucumber trellis, but they will probably still wind up competing with the grapevine for space. cattitude did some more weeding in the front yard this afternoon, uncovering more slates in the process, and I planted the tomato in the just-weeded area near the second half-dozen lettuces I put in recently. I have no idea why someone put a slate path up the middle of the front yard (leading to nothing in particular), but I'm not surprised someone else piled topsoil on them. Pending landlady approval, the slates will be getting a new home across the street with 42itous.

I also put a few tiny purple basil seedlings in the planter with the green basil plants I bought and planted around the end of April. The idea of starting our own seeds was good, but it turned out that when the sprouts got large enough to be moved out of the mini-greenhouse and into pots, one or both of the cats was treating them as a fresh salad bar. (They're not allowed on the counters, but we're not always awake, or home, to enforce that.)

I have no idea what we're going to do with the rest of the garden space. Chance more cucumbers, or melon? More tomatoes? Root vegetables? I should probably sow clover seed in the meantime; we've got enough of it.

I was in a mood to walk around at lunchtime, and had no particular idea of what I wanted to eat, so I went east a bit, and south, and then back west a little, and found myself outside a vegetarian South Indian restaurant, which had reviews in the window praising its all-you-can-eat $7 lunch buffet. Okay, why not?

I went in, was seated, and walked over to the buffet. I filled a plate with cucumber slices, a pancake, a piece of flatbread, two random curries of the "I wonder what this is, let's find out" school, some tamarind sauce, and some of the red chopped-onion relish. (There were a other things that I didn't take.) The first curry turned out, when I got a look at it, to be okra. Well, I already had it on my plate, might as well taste it.

I liked it enough to go back for seconds. (The other curry, a string bean-cauliflower-carrot dish, was less interesting.) I haven't liked most okra in the past, because of the texture; the cooks at Chennai Garden made it tasty and not slimy. By the time one of the waiters put a plate of some kind of pudding on the buffet, after another customer asked about dessert, I was too full to bother finding out what kind.

A nice thing about being my age is that while you don't have to eat okra if you don't want to, if you find out you like it nobody will stop you from taking seconds.

I came home from the Greenmarket with a bunch of beets and a bundle of leeks. We already had an acorn squash.

Prepping the vegetables was enough to make me wish for a compost heap, as I threw out huge amounts of greenery, squash seeds, and the like.

Then I put them all in to roast. I misjudged the timing, so we had roasted squash (with maple syrup) and leeks, then forty-five minutes later had roasted beets. (They'd cooled down enough that they needed to be started almost from scratch).

I'm not surprised that julian_tiger likes roasted beets. He likes most things. I am surprised that he liked them enough to do the pop-up pussycat thing, head over the table, to tell us he wanted more. And the paws on my lap thing, with the same meaning, asking for yet more.

I'm in the middle of putting together a tossed salad for dinner. (Despite at least four thunderstorms, it's oppressively hot and humid--salad and bread will do.)

I have a head of Simpson's lettuce I picked up at the Union Square Greenmarket. A nice leafy green lettuce, loose head--I bought it because I'd never heard of this variety.

I tore off a few leaves (salad for one), and took them over to the sink to wash them. The bottom of each leaf had rich black dirt clinging to it.

I thought "These were grown in actual soil!" and then realized how profoundly weird it is that this is noteworthy.

I suspect that most of the lettuce I get was also grown in actual soil: but it's been carefully removed before the lettuce reaches the supermarket or greengrocer. I wash lettuce out of habit and training, and in case it's been sprayed with noxious chemicals.

I will now go and tear up watercress, purchased at the same market stall but, unsurprisingly, without black soil clinging to it.

For dessert, I have strawberries. Good, ripe, local strawberries. Which may or may not have been grown in actual soil.