Harvest Party

There’s just a few things left in the garden including some truly mongo carrots. There are still some small ones among the giants, which is good because only the small ones make good carrot sticks. As for the oversized ones, you might as well gnaw on a tree branch. They will be good roasted.

Giant carrots

We had our annual harvest party yesterday. Hilda and I cooked for three days. I asked Dad to make a shrine for the Holy Family Potato. It was beautiful. Still, I got no offers.

The shrine of the Holy Family Potato

Terry arranged his squash and pumpkins on the trailer for guests to pick from. We roasted a Delicata squash in chunks so people could experience its awesome deliciousness for themselves in the hope that they would be inspired to take home two dozen or so. That didn’t happen, but one guest went back for two more after trying it.

The trailer o'curcubits: Pumpkins in the back, squash in the front. The striped ones are the Delicata, the best squash on the planet.

We had the hot food on the counter. Chicken-squash tortilla soup is on the front right. I made it with tomatoes, beans, peppers, jalapenos, squash, and corn from the garden as well as chicken and chicken stock from one of the old hens. I put together skewers of little potato runts, Gruyere cheese, and olives (front left) and heated them in an electric skillet until the cheese got all melty.  Behind the skewers is a hot dip of cheese and homemade salsa. (The cheese was, in fact, Velveeta. I’m conflicted about eating a dairy product that is shelf-stable at room temperature until March of next year, but really nothing melts like Velveeta.) In the middle is a very popular roasted vegetable lasagna that I made with baked tomato pasta sauce, fresh pasta, and ratatouille. I had hoped to have leftovers for lunches this week, but only one piece remained. Hilda made Brussels sprouts with mustard butter ( which were eaten in their entirety), a chicken pot pie, and a sauerkraut casserole with kielbasa that was to die for. Unfortunately, the sauerkraut casserole used only 1.5 cups of sauerkraut, which still leaves a huge amount in the crock that will have to be canned when we get a moment.

Hot food buffet

The cold food was on the dining table. Guests brought various dips, chips, and crackers. I made Asian Cole slaw from a Danish ballhead cabbage and a giant carrot.

Guests gather around the cold food

The dessert were in the living room on the coffee table, which was the last flat surface available for food service. I made the usual three: cherry-oatmeal-pecan-pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, and the Legendary Pumpkin _shaped Cookies _{that contain no actual pumpkin}. Really, they are just sugar cookies with buttercream frosting (only I never have cream, so I guess it is butter-milk frosting, but that conveys an entirely different idea), but people go on and on about them. I don’t even like them. I like cookies with either chocolate, or inclusions (nuts, oatmeal, etc), or chocolate inclusions. But when it comes time to think about the party, here come the questions: “Are you going to make those pumpkin cookies that contain no actual pumpkin again?” I can only infer that people are so used to packaged cookies that have a lot of funny-tasting chemical additives to keep them soft that when they taste something that is just butter, sugar, flour, and vanilla, they think they have died and gone to heaven. These are sad times.

Guests in the living room with pumpkin bars barely visible on the coffee table

Legendary Pumpkin shaped Cookies that contain no actual pumpkin

It was a chilly day. After awhile, it got hot in the house. Guests wandered in and out the regulate their temperature. We got out the bubble toys for the kids.

Left to right around the table: Dad, Aaron, Joe, Paige, and Sarah

Sarah making bubbles

We still have lots of squash left. We’ll have to find another outlet. We did get a fair amount of food out of the freezer, though.