ugly CSA week 10

[cellio]

• 2 bell peppers, 1 medium green and 1 very large half-orange (hoping it'll keep going)
• 1 zucchino
• 1 large acorn squash
• 1 medium red onion
• 8 medium Bartlet pears
• 7 medium-large Macintosh? apples

Weight: about 9 pounds.

I like fall squashes -- butternut, acorn, delicata, all good! I would be happy to get more of those. (And I wouldn't say no to more onions; a singleton surprised me a little.)

The manifest said Macintosh apples. Most images I found are redder than these, but maybe that's an effect of when they were picked.

Last week's apples were very good as apple crisp. I might do more of that, or make applesauce, or maybe it's time to dry some. (I like dried fruit, but last time I made it I had a working dehydrator. Time to learn how to do that in an oven.)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

ZucchinO hee. I wish I could send you the dehydrator I have. I have no space to use it Dehydrating in an oven is often annoying. Turning it down so low causes gas leakage.

[cellio]

I could get a dehydrator, but it's a rare need and then I would have to store it, so I'd rather use the oven. My oven is only a few years old and seems to have a good seal, or at least I've never smelled (the thing you can smell that they add to) gas. I use my oven to dry herbs too.

[minoanmiss]

Hooray for the oven!

[hlinspjalda]

What have you been doing with the pears?

[cellio]

Flaune of almayne (about a third of the way down).

Pear bread, courtesy dsrtao.

Pear crisp (like apple crisp).

In granola.

Just plain eating - yum. :-)

[hlinspjalda]

Thanks for the links!

Pears are Real In at my local greengrocer. If I hadn't been buying all the stuff for yontif I'd have scored a few pounds yesterday. Never tried a Flaune of Almayne, but right now I'm looking for ways to feed the Bear fruit that doesn't hurt his jaws, and this sounds like a concept: combination dinner protein and fruit.

[cellio]

I first made the flaune recipe many years ago (from my paper copy of the Miscellany) and concurred with Cariadoc that it is good. I've usually made it with apples, but the pear version was very nice.

In the past I grated the fruit, not having a blender at the time nor the patience to do all that with a mortar and pestle. I have a blender now so I used it for this recent one. With that, the most dentally-challenging thing would be the crust. (I used a shortbread crumb crust that I already had, rather than a proper pie crust that I would have had to either buy or make, and that worked.)

It's more dessert than dinner protein, but you could play with the proportions.

[hlinspjalda]

Did you notice an appreciable texture difference between the pulped version and the grated version? I'd been thinking about grating, because Mr. Fixer likes some chew, it's just that he can't do a lot of texture right now.

[cellio]

It seems a significant difference to me; I prefer it a little less pulped than what I got, but that might mean I over-blended (not having a lot of experience with that use case for blenders). You could try an experiment: grate some pear and bake it like you would for a pear crisp, and see if he can handle that level of chew. That way you don't have to commit to a whole pie's worth to find out -- just do a muffin's worth or so.

I'll probably go back to grating for myself.

Edited to add: when grating, try to collect the juice too.

[fauxklore]

I'm quite fond of pears poached in red wine.

[cellio]

Me too. In the plans for this week. :-)

[loosecanon]

apple color is influenced by how much sun it receives, as well, so interior apples (the ones under the most leaves) can be less showy.
My mac tree was rather pale as well, but that should not affect taste or texture much.

Nice haul!

[cellio]

Thanks for the information! I don't care about showy, just about taste (and knowing that they're ripe, which they seem to be).

[loosecanon]

Apples have a wide window of ripeness; under means crisp and crunchy, over means tender and sweet.

If you have a food processor, the shred blade may solve your above concerns.