Autumn, Thanksgiving, and What I Ate

This photo shows what was left after a broiled "salad" of tomatoes and pesto from the Enright CSA, layered with some fresh mozzarella. It looked so pretty when I was finished, I thought I should take a photo of it. I'm pretty sure there's a Kandinsky at the Cleveland Art Museum that looks a lot like it . . .

The salad was adapted from a recipe from fellow CSA member Carolanne Frame; she used fresh basil in her recipe but I used pesto instead. It's easy to do, just slice tomatoes and mozarella and layer with basil or pesto, then broil until the cheese gets bubbly. Then drizzle over a little vinaigrette (or just basalmic vinegar and olive oil), and it's a great salad for a cold winter's day.

Even though it's getting colder, we're still enjoying some fresh produce. I made a great pepper soup today, with the fire toned down just a bit with brown rice and sour cream. We've also had some "porridges" of turnip, potato, squash, and beets, and I'm using some eggplants I roasted and froze (just the pulp) to make baba ganoush for Thanksgiving. I've also used some of those frozen cubes of pesto to make pesto bread, which was very delicious.

And, a grand experiment--there is sauerkraut bubbling away in the root cellar. I have a very vague memory of my grandmother and great aunt having a barrel where sauerkraut fermented down in the basement, so if this works, maybe I'll get a barrel.

We'll have a bit of produce from the CSA for Thanksgiving--a few more of those peppers and a couple of late-turning tomatoes in the salad; some sweet potatoes that still look good made into a casserole; the baba ganoush with eggplant and a little garlic that's still left. Then, as winter settles in, we'll have to go to the freezer and the root cellar for the green beans, pear butter, and pickles. Maybe not all at the same meal . . .

Oh, and here's what the broiled tomato-mozarella caprese salad looked like before it was eaten--before it was broiled, too.