November 2010

If you had told me, even two years ago, that one day I would open up the crisp white butcher paper of a package from Clancey’s Meats and Fish, gasp at the stunning beauty of a couple of beef short ribs and run for my camera, I would have told you you were nuts. If you had told me that I would decide to write my next article about short ribs solely because the picture was so fantastic, I would have told you you were double nuts. If you had told me that while I was going all Richard Avedon on the short ribs, I would simultaneously be cursing myself for not having bought more of them, I would have paused, shrugged and agreed that it sounded like something I might do.

See the photo, above? That’s me in the middle grinning and blushing like a 12-year-old girl going backstage to meet the Jonas Brothers.

But, needless to say, those guys aren’t the Jonases. And though you may not immediately recognize their faces, I’m guessing you’ll need only their first names to know immediately who they are.

The one on the left is Ben. The other is Jerry.

Pumpkins and other squash have been accumulating in my house since early October, so with Thanksgiving approaching, I decided to put them to the use they were intended for: delicious baked goods.

The first recipe below is so easy a child could make it (all right, maybe not a small child) -- I've been making it since I was in middle school, when I found a fast, easy pumpkin-pie recipe that didn't even bother with a crust (which I viewed as an annoying impediment to the pumpkin custard filling). I've been making it ever since.

Back then, I made the pie with canned ingredients. Nowadays the process is a little more involved, but a lot more tasty. A few years back I decided to experiment. I roasted a pumpkin from the Eastside Food Co-op and made my usual pie recipe. I expected it to be less good than one made with canned pumpkin. Turns out I was wrong. I'll never go back.

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to help out at the Midtown Farmers Market in Minneapolis, one of the area markets that allows patrons to use Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, commonly called Food Stamps) benefits to purchase fresh produce. Seeing firsthand how Farm Bill legislation is put into practice was a great reminder of how something as seemingly arcane as the Farm Bill can actually affect our neighborhoods, and of the kind of improvements we can make in the 2012 Farm Bill.