A Tale of Two Cucurbits

Today I noticed i was eating two cucurbits for lunch.  I know, weird thing to notice, but these were from such different origins and I hadn't slept much and what can I say, I noticed.  The first was some melon from last year from our farm that I had frozen.  Adam Hausman of Adam's Berries gave me this idea a few years ago.  I was bemoaning the lack of winter fruit and he told me about melon in smoothies,  The unfrozen consistency is such that that is about all the melon is good for.  That or ice cream or mousse or something.  But boy is it good for it.  You would be surprised how flavorful our melons are and how distinct fresh summer flavor comes through even when mixed with aging bananas and frozen blueberries.  The Hardest part is chopping the melon off the giant hunk (I froze it in a gallon freezer bag, which I have made about a 12 smoothies with and could probably make another 12 before it's all gone.

The other cucurbit is pumpkin (this family also includes in case you didn't know cucumbers and summer squash).  My son Ciaran was insisting on pumpkin bread so Rachel bought a can of pumpkin.  This is the second time we have bought a can of pumpkin.  Normally I make mashed pumpkin out of either Queensland blue or the tan long island cheese pumpkins, both great tasting, (and Queensland stores really well too) but the flood more or less wiped out the winter squash crop (which coincidentally is one of the things I am planting up at South Village).  Well, I have heard that this is one thing that you might as well get canned.  People say for all the work it makes little difference if you use canned or fresh pumpkin, so I thought I would try it.  IT DOES MAKE A DIFFERENCE.  Both now and at Thanksgiving I was disappointed.  I mean, the canned was passable, but there is definitely something missing, and to be honest, I don't find the pumpkin cooking process that odious, especially in the middle of winter when you want to heat up your house anyways.

Yep, the next few weeks are always the hardest for fresh and local veg, then it starts to ease up with baby spinach and asparagus etc. 

I wanted to thank all the members that have already signed up.  Link to website has also been added to this sidebar, so now you can just go back and forth between the two, which I know you have been waiting for.