Goodbye Summer: Peach Sauce

The first day of fall arrived with a giant harvest moon in the sky. But weeks before, summer was fading. Slowly each week's crop of peaches lost a bit of their summer sweetness. When I see this happening with a favorite food, I kind of, well, hoard. Then a few days later I realize I am stuck with WAY more of that item than we can eat.

The problem is that peaches don't last that long. At least not when they are ripe when picked — which is the only way they ever taste as good as they can. Weeknight dinner and 1.5 lbs. of peaches to use or lose. What to do? If you still have one more magic week left south of here, this one's for you.

Savory Peach Sauce (for pork chops)
1.5 lb. Peaches, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup champagne vinegar
1/2 cup honey
2 cloves garlic
1 tbs. olive oil
1 onion chopped
1/2 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. dijon mustard
1 sprig rosemary, chopped
1/4 tsp. salt
pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil in a skillet. Add the onion and garlic and saute. Add the vinegar, peaches and spices and herbs. Simmer for about 10-15 minute to soften the peaches and reduce the liquid. Add the honey and combine. Salt and pepper to taste.

French Heirloom Pumpkin Soup

It doesn't look edible, does it?

Well, looks can be deceiving. When we cut into this Brode Galeux D'Eysines pumpkin, the kiddo's first remark was, "It smells like a peach!" And it did, the squash flesh was a yellow-orange with a fruity aroma somewhere between peach, hazelnut and that characteristic winter squash earthiness.

Once the soup was prepared, I didn't have any trouble getting the kid or vegephobe adults at the table to dig in with a wedge of Rosemary Olive Oil bread for a spoon.

All goes to show, never judge a vegetable by its rind. You can learn more about this and other exotic heirloom squashes here at rareseeds.com. Or, you can just go to your farmers market and explore. I highly recommend the exploration approach.

French Heirloom Pumpkin Soup

1 5-6 lb. pumpkin (Galeux D'Eyesines, Rouge Vif D'Etampes, or Musquee de Provence)

2 tbs. olive oil

2 leeks, sliced

1 yellow onion, diced

2 sprigs rosemary, chopped

3 sprigs thyme, chopped

1 tbs. chopped sage

1/2 bunch Italian parsley, chopped

8 cups chicken broth

3 tbs. butter

1/3 cup half and half

1 tbs. sugar, optional

pinch nutmeg

salt and pepper to taste

First, get a sharp knife. Cut the pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds. Cut the halves into manageable chunks, then cut away the outer rind. Dice the flesh into 1-inch cubes. It's really not so hard if you have a good chef's knife.

Heat the olive oil in a large stock pot, medium heat. Add the leeks, onion and herbs and sweat the aromatics until translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the pumpkin cubes and the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and let simmer until the pumpkin is tender, about 20-30 minutes.

Puree using an immersion blender. Swirl in the butter and the half and half. Add the nutmeg, then taste and adjust the salt and pepper as needed. Use the sugar if you like a slight sweetness to your soups.

It's pumpkin season! One of my favorite times of the year as I have this slight odd habit of collecting pumpkins. If you are looking for information on pumpkins, these posts will be a great source of tips, recipes and descriptions.

A Guide to Heirloom Pumpkins, with photos

How to Make Your Own Pumpkin Puree

Tons of Pumpkin Recipes

A Glimpse of My Pumpkin Obsession

How to Tell "Decorative" Pumpkins from Edible Pumpkins

Dark Tales from the School Lunch Room

The Main Course

In 2008, the largest meat recall in history occurred. 143 million pounds of beef were recalled. 37 million pounds of that meat had already been served to the one slaughterhouse's primary buyer: the school lunch program. The recall was based on the slaughter of downed, or sick, animals. Most of the animals were former dairy cows that could no longer produce. In other words, pretty low quality stuff.

Three of the six largest meat recalls in history are due to contamination from E. coli 0157:H7. The bacteria can cause things like renal failure, coma, and death.

In 2009, The National School Lunch Program purchased 3.5 million pounds of a substance called "pink slime." Pink slime is a meat "filler" product that is made by taking the cheapest of meat scraps from many different slaughtering plants, pushing these through a machine to create a paste, separate the fat out, then combine the resulting paste with ammonia to allegedly kill pathogens. Often the addition of pink slime to meats increases the pathogen count, so the meat ends up with ammonia AND nasty bacteria. Cost savings to use the slime added up to only three cents per pound. Yet, 70 percent of the burgers consumed in the US contain, you guessed it, pink slime.

If you are having the school's chicken nuggets today instead of beef, here's a look at the ingredients and how they are made.

HFCS, It Does a Body Good?

Actually, this should be milk. Or what kids drink should be.

• A serving of flavored milk has the same amount of sugar as a serving of soda.
• Flavored milk is the most consumed type of milk for school lunches, 71 percent of milk served is flavored.
• According to the National Dairy Council, (an industry lobby) the addition of "HFCS, a nutritive sweetener" helps encourage kids to eat healthy foods with no adverse effects. The NDC paid for the study, of course.

On the (Dark) Side

If you are looking for the healthier items on the menu, the optional side dishes are often the best choices. But, canned and bland as a whole, few kids are likely to choose them.

Let's be honest here, even if the vegetable sides were school garden fresh and prepared by chefs, some of the kids won't eat them. Even in the home of Jamie Oliver, Britain's new health minister is reviewing Oliver's school food program efforts since many kids will not participate. So, here is the dark side of school lunch. Darker than the sides of cheetos, froot snacks, sherbet and "tri-taters" that might make it onto kids' plates. Perhaps darker even than pink slime. Ready for it?

School lunch is one meal a day.

Many of the reasons kids won't eat healthier foods when these are available and well-prepared have to do with those other two meals of the day, and the first five years of meals they experienced before kindergarten. If you want to fix school lunch, you have to fix home dinner.

Would you like a bit of extra sauce? Food alone won't fix it.

There needs to be health education, innovative programs that engage kids in the process of growing or cooking foods, or helping shape their menus. These is the good side of programs like Berkeley's, where gardening and cooking education have been shown to increase vegetable consumption for a significant number of kids. These programs need to happen at home, too. It's just going to take a whole lot more than that one meal.

Dessert

Given that the average school lunch has sweetened yogurt with a sugary muffin as a protein choice daily, flavored milks that have as much sugar as soda, canned fruit in heavy syrup and froot snacks as sides, and HFCS in baked goods and even entrees for "flavoring," do we really need dessert?

Appetizers, Related posts in this series

School Lunch: The Next Challenge

A History Lesson in Lunch

S is for Squash (sort of) and Saffron

When I see an unusual fruit or vegetable at the farmers market, on impulse I have to stop and ask "What is that?" The next thing I do, almost before the farmer can answer, is buy it and being to figure out how to cook it. Maybe I should get out more, get a social life, just get a life ... but this is my version of fun. Hey, I have a kid, I used to get out more.

This is a cucuzzi, an Italian variety of edible gourd. Not a true squash. It tastes like zucchini and cucumber blended. The texture is a bit drier than zucchini, and you can certainly use zucchini in the following recipe, it works even better actually. But, how else was I going to cook a giant s-shaped gourd?

Squash and Tomato Gratin

1/3 cup basmati rice

pinch saffron

2/3 cups water

1/2 tsp. sweet paprika

1 tsp. coriander

1/8 tsp. ground anise

2 eggs

1/2 cup crumbled feta

2 lbs. cherry tomatoes or diced heirloom tomatoes, halved

1/2 large onion, diced

1 tbs. fresh oregano

3 medium zucchini or one cucuzzi, sliced 1/4 inch thick

2 tbs. olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Place the ingredients rice through anise into a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Turn heat down and simmer about 20-30 minutes until the rice is done. Fluff with a fork to blend the spices. Set aside to cool.

While the rice simmers, spray two baking sheets with cooking spray. On one, add the tomatoes, oregano, onion and 1 tbs. olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Spread out to an even layer. On the other baking sheet, toss the zucchini (or cucuzzi) with the remaining 1 tbs. of olive oil and lay out the squash slices in an even layer. Roast the vegetables in the oven, tomatoes on the top rack, about 10-15 minutes until edges are just golden.

Add the two eggs and all but 2 tbs. of the feta cheese to the cooled rice mixture. Assemble gratin in a 9x13 casserole dish by building one layer of zucchini, then a layer of rice. Next layer of zucchini, then rice. For the top layer, add the tomatoes and the reserved feta cheese. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes.

When done, it sort of looks like this. Which is a mess. Casseroles are tough to make pretty, right? It's a bunch of stuff together in one baking dish. It tastes good and it makes a nice one-dish meatless main.