September 25, 2003

• Beans, Corn & Squash

  
  

  It’s a seasonal thing.  Hard-shelled, long-keeping winter squash show up in the stores a week or so before the supermarkets get their first shipment of pumpkins.  I willingly eat summer squash.  I even grow zucchini because it is so rewarding, with high yields and enormous fruits in our climate.  But the flavor and texture of summer squash is bland and uninteresting compared to the winter varieties.  My consumption of the sweet creamy winter squashes goes beyond willing into eager and avid.  Yum! 

  
  

  

  
  

  When I saw delicata, butternut, white acorn and other fancy squashes on sale a few days ago at an excellent price, I asked Greyfox if he’d like some.  He sorta wrinkled his nose.  He thought he didn’t like squash.  In general, I get the impression a lot of people feel that way.  But I bought some anyway, for myself:  a butternut, a delicata, a swan white acorn, a multi-colored carnival squash and a golden uriki kuri.  The first three I knew I liked, and the last two I wanted to try for the first time.  Greyfox peered into the shopping cart with a quizzical look and I answered the unasked question:  “They have a long shelf life; some would keep all winter, but I intend to eat them all before they go bad.”

  
  

  Late that evening, in his little cabin in Wasilla, I split the delicata lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, put a bit of butter into the hollow of each half and microwaved them.  I offered half to him when it was done, and he consented to try it only because it smelled so good.  He loved it, of course.  I suppose that if he thought at all when I asked him if he liked squash (as opposed to simply reacting to the name), he was thinking of bland zucchini and the like.

  
  

  Subsequently, as we were browsing the produce section yesterday, after packing up the contents of his cabin and before lunch, he raised no objection to my purchasing a few more squash.  (well, six more, or seven if you count the big pumpkin that’s intended to be our Jack O’Lantern next month on our wedding anniversary) 

  
  

  That first evening when I bought the five different colorful varieties, the clerk had asked me if they were for display, and I assured her that they were primarily just good food.  That does not preclude their making an attractive display.  When Greyfox and I got home yesterday afternoon, I moved the fruit basket and rearranged the rock collection on the coffee table in front of the sofa, and “displayed” the squash simply because there was no other place to put them.  This place has been rather crowded and cluttered ever since we started moving in, and it has taken a quantum clutter jump now that Greyfox and his stuff are back.

  
  

  The coffee table itself was one of his flea market acquisitions, bought for a mere $2 (because two of its legs had been broken off and glued back on) to hold the coffee maker and electric hotplate in his first tiny cabin at the Flats.  I think it makes an excellent addition to Couch Potato Heaven.  It takes up part of the space where Doug used to lay out his pallet to sleep, but since he now sleeps in the room that was once Greyfox’s, that’s no problem.  I’ve mentioned “Heaven”, our gaming space, before, but never pictured it here.  Just now, I picked up the camera, swiveled my ergonomic office chair and snapped this pic from the workstation here, over the back of the sofa.  That’s Doug doing an impossible skating trick with the latest Tony Hawk game.

  
  

  If you’re wondering about the rainbow and sunset shots, they came about in this way: yesterday I’d been changing sheets on my bed  (against the windows in the background of the “living room” shot above) and went out to the car to bring in Greyfox’s favorite pillow.  As soon as I saw the light, I came back and unplugged the little Kodak from where it was still attached to the computer from the last time we saved its pics.

  
  

  To get the camera, I had to reach over and around Greyfox as he sat here blogging on power and powerlessness.  I made some breathless exclamation about the sunset light, but I suppose he barely heard me, being absorbed in his activity.  I tried to shield the lens from the rain as I went out.  First I turned toward the west and took a shot of the backyard, the golden sky through the trees, the third pic from the top, above.

  
  

  Next, I headed toward the front of the house to get the light on the treetops across the road (#4 above and the shot at left here).  It was not until I had cleared the edge of the grove of trees across the road in front of our house that I saw the rainbow and took that shot just above this one and below the one of Doug in Couch Potato Heaven.

  
  

  I turned back down the road then, headed for my path through the grove of trees.  I wanted to get out on the muskeg beyond those trees for an unobstructed view of the rainbow (second shot from top, above).   By that time, I’d had to wipe rainwater from the lens a couple of times, my suede boots were soaked, and I’d had a vagrant thought that it might have been wise to put on a jacket.   It was not until I got past the trees and out onto the muskeg that I noticed the second rainbow outside the more distinct inner bow.  It’s faintly visible in the shot at left that I took from the road before taking the path through the trees, but didn’t really show up until I’d altered the brightness and contrast of the pic.  The line of gold on the horizon is the setting sun lighting up the trees beyond the muskeg.  It’s one of the perennial attractive features of sunsets this time of year here.

  
  

  It was really a good thing I didn’t pause to put on a jacket last night.  By the time I turned back toward the house the sky had gone from golden through orange to a deepening coral pink.  I brought the camera back in, hung my suede boots on the boot dryer behind the wood stove, put on dry shoes and went back out to fulfill my original mission of getting Greyfox’s pillow from my car.  By then, the sun was gone and the sky had gone to  a uniform dark blue-gray.

  
  

  And now, to get back to beans, corn and squash:  that combination was very important to our Native American ancestors as they made the transition from hunter-gatherers to early agriculture, and afterward.   All three are long-keeping staples that can last through winter and supplement whatever the hunters could find to bring in–or, nowadays in this neighborhood, it fills in between the meals we make from meat we acquire on trips down the valley to the supermarket, or that might come to us as roadkill.  The amino acids in the beans and corn combine to make complete proteins as good as that in meat, and the complex carbohydrates give us energy while the fiber keeps things moving through our guts.

  
  

  Greyfox and I both have mixed ancestry that is more European than American, but we’ve found that we thrive on that ancestral American diet.  I’ve loved tortillas, squash and peppers all my life, and he has acquired a taste for them since he’s been hanging out with me.  In our pursuit of an easy, healthy recovery from drug addictions, we’ve learned that malnutrition contributes to the brain chemistry of addiction, and food allergies are one basis of that malnutrition.  Neither of us is allergic to beans, corn or squash.

  
  

  Around dinner time last night, when I realized I’d gotten hungry and had no meal planned, I split a black acorn squash, buttered it and popped it into the microwave.  Then, thinking “corn?”, I decided to pop a batch of popcorn.  When the squash was almost done, I opened a can of refried beans and popped them in the microwave as soon as the squash came out, along with some butter to melt for the popcorn.  I always pop my corn in olive oil, for the essential fatty acids which help us digest and utilize the butterfat that gives us healthy cholesterol to keep our brains and nervous systems working.  Low-fat diets and fat-free carbohydrate laden foods are making this country’s people fat and stupid.  Wise up, folks.  It is carbos, not dietary fats, that are converted to body fat.

  
  

  As is evident in this last shot I took on my way into the house last night, I didn’t manage to keep my lens free of raindrops the whole time.  Still, even with the droplets on the lens, the colors make that a shot worth keeping.  BTW, only the very first rainbow shot, just below the squash pic at top, is completely unmodified.  There was no color modification to any of these pictures, but most of them had some work done to brightness and contrast.  A couple were cropped down from larger shots, but most are full frame.  If none of that interests you, just excuse my photographer’s pride and enjoy the pretty pictures.

  • 4:25 pm
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