menu for October 22nd, 2022

Sayuri's note

We usually have one big temperature drop in mid-late October and then it warms up again. Just before the dinner, the mornings of October 18, 19, 20 were cold and the 19th and 20th were just below freezing, so we had a hard frost. The marigold, zinnia, basil and other plants were gone. I imagined the plants saying that they had a good time and that they would see us again next year!” I am going to collect seeds later and plant them next year! I saved some shiso leaves for the main dish for the dinner. The kale, collards, turnips, and green onions are not affected by frost for now. Hopefully the deer won't munch on them too much. Their flavor of the greens gets sweeter and sweeter with the cold. Other crops like lettuce, Napa cabbage, and daikon are growing under the row covers. Joe helped a lot with the row covers before the cold weather. The persimmons are still on the tree. After harvesting them, I will peel them and dry them.

People make soup all over the world during the cold season. Kenchinjiru is a type of Japanese soup using root vegetables like daikon, carrots, taro, sweet potatoes, burdock root and tofu. This year was the first time I made my own sweet potato “slips,” or shoots you can start from the tubers, so harvesting this year's sweet potatoes was very rewarding to me. For the soup base, I decided to use the miso paste that l made instead of using soy sauce. Because of all of the nutrients in the ingredients, I think that it’s a well balanced soup that will really warm you up!

We visited an apple orchard in Ellijay to buy fresh apples. I loved to see the people of all ages and places together enjoying the apples and the orchards. I wanted to use apples in different ways at the dinner so I served fresh apples in the salad with garden leaf lettuce, kale, roasted butternut squash, and pecans using apple cider vinegar as one of the dressing ingredients. Our garden apples were an early type that is better for baking so l used them in the apple cake. I used some Honey Crisp, Granny Smith and Fuji too. For spices, I used cinnamon, cardamom. A scoop of black walnut ice cream (Joe’s favorite!) topped it off.