Waste Not, Want Not

First, an update on the pumpkin post. I harvested four gorgeous pumpkins, left three to decorate the deck for now, and cut up the smallest one for culinary experimentation. I roasted the seeds to snack on and used some of the flesh for a spicy African pureed veggie and peanut butter soup. That recipe does a good job of hiding whatever veggies you use with its cumin, red pepper, ginger, and peanut flavors (delicious!) so it wasn't exactly a scientific test of the pumpkin's viability as food. But I baked the other half of the pumpkin and tried a spoonful plain. It was paler and waterier than butternut squash, with less flavor, but certainly not bad tasting, just bland. If you want to eat your Halloween pumpkins, I recommend using the flesh in a spicy or savory recipe. I scooped out the remainder of the baked flesh and put it in a non-stick frying pan with a little sesame oil and some soy sauce. I threw in some chard for color contrast, and the result was very tasty. I may have sprinkled a little bit of parmesan on top. Anyway, it was a satisfyingly successful experiment, especially considering that I didn't intend to grow pumpkins at all.

A week or so after the pumpkin taste-test, I bought a butternut squash to bake. As I was scooping out the seeds, it occurred to me that there is probably no reason to waste them. If pumpkin seeds make a good snack, why not squash seeds? This time, I sprinkled soy sauce on the seeds and put them in the toaster oven on a tray. Yum! The store-bought pumpkin seed snacks always have too much salt on them for my taste. These were much better, and they came "free" with the squash. Bonus!

The urge to splurge

What triggers your urge to shop? Do you regularly practice "retail therapy?"
I have been in school or teaching school for the past 35+ years, and my biggest spending trigger is that back-to-school time during the late summer when I anticipate what for me is much more the start of a new year than January first. The urge to shop at this time is a Pavlovian response, a comfort, and a phenomenon I never really examined before this year. But for the past year or so I have been trying to reduce personal consumption of the earth's resources by purchasing as little new stuff as possible. So when I felt the pull of the mall this time around, I stopped myself and tried to identify my needs instead of hopping in the car and heading for the shops.
As it turned out, I really didn't NEED anything. I am fortunate to work in a school district that provides office supplies and teaching materials, so my annual trip to Staples has been an unnecessary indulgence. I have plenty of clothes and jewelry. I pulled out the fall clothes and did some mending and ironing, and I'm good to go. But the idea of new clothes for back-to-school dies hard. It's as if part of the excitement of going back involves the new outfits I get to show off. I found a way to keep the tradition alive while sticking with my values by allowing myself to go to my favorite consignment store to spend an afternoon trying on clothes. I bought a couple of shirts and sweaters so that I can feel like I have something "new" to wear, but it was really cheap and nothing new was created, no resources were used; in fact, I supported a small local business and recycled someone else's castaways at the same time. I found new-looking, designer-label clothes for a fraction of the original prices! It was all the more exciting for being guilt-free, I must say. Then I made a new ID tag lanyard by taking apart some old necklaces and restringing the beads. Finally, I have plans to make a new quilted pocketbook. I have lots of quilt fabric scraps and some pocketbook patterns already, so there's no need to buy anything except for a zipper.

The Accidental Pumpkin

I didn't mean to grow pumpkins. But I had some trouble getting my eggplant seeds to germinate this past spring, so my friend gave me some of her extra seedlings in 3" pots, along with a cute little baby squash plant that she said was a compact butternut that would hardly take up any room at all.
Now, I have limited space in my veggie beds, so I don't grow ornamentals -- only stuff I can eat -- and I don't grow large sprawling vines such as melons and big winter squashes. But when I returned from a week-long vacation midway through the summer, this supposedly well-behaved plant had turned into a monster and was taking over the world. It had a very dark green round fruit the size of a softball which looked nothing like a butternut squash to me. A mystery plant! I vowed on the spot that whatever it turned into, I would find a way to cook it and eat it. Eventually, my friend apologetically identified it as a pumpkin. Unfortunately, she also told me that these pretty orange pumpkins we buy to make jack-o-lanterns are not the best for eating, and that pumpkin pie filling is actually now made from winter squash, not the Halloween pumpkins I was inadvertently nurturing. I, however, refuse to be deterred. I found a pumpkin soup recipe in my World Vegetarian cookbook, and I'm going to salt and roast the seeds for snacking. I drastically cut back the vines to keep them from shading my other plants, and saved only 4 pumpkins, some of which I definitely intend to eat! I'll let you know how it tastes.