Tantre farm share, week 19

Bottom row: carrots, qt of Brussels sprouts, onions, French radishes, tatsoi, two hot peppers and basil
Middle-ish row: red fingerlings, lots of red peppers, cilantro, tomatillos, turnip greens
Top row: green beans, broccoli, baby lettuces, butternut squash

I can't say that this week's menu plan is terribly inspired or inventive, but hopefully it will be tasty:

• The tomatillos, some onion and the hot peppers and cilantro will get turned into tomatillo salsa.
• I'll make cheese grits with spicy turnip and radish greens for breakfast.
• Tonight we'll have roasted red pepper pasta sauce on whole wheat penne which will use up some peppers, onion and basil (I don't have any heavy cream, so I'll use some milk and a little sour cream--it won't be quite as luxurious, but hell, it's a Thursday and we don't need luxury on a Thursday); steamed broccoli will be served with it. (Boring, I know, but the girl critter actually eats it).
• The tatsoi will go into a lunch stir fry with tofu and any of the broccoli that is left over.
• My book group is meeting this week and I'll bring a salad with the baby lettuces, radishes, red peppers and carrots. I might mix up a blue cheese vinaigrette to make a change from our normal dressing.
• Some of the butternut squash will be used to fill homemade ravioli and I'll strip the sage bush outside to add fried sage leaves to the brown butter sauce.
• We need to have a roasted night with roasted Brussels sprouts, fingerling potatoes and what's left of the butternut squash. We might need some protein source to go with it...personally I could just pig myself on roasted vegetables but the other members of my household will probably feel like their needs have not been completely met.

Putting on the pink

The days have been gray and there is a chill in the air. Autumn is definitely here and I need a jolt of color to keep me perky. In the last few days I've been drawn to hot pink. This isn't a color I usually embrace--I'm more of a red and orange type--but it has felt good and energizing in a transitional sort of way.

I've begun knitting a pair of wool socks from some stash wool that I acquired about 4 years ago.
I'm doing them toe-up, using the short row toe instructions that I found in Socks from the Toe-Up. This isn't the first time I tried toe-up socks; in fact this very wool was used in my first attempt and ripped out when it looked funky. But the short-row toe worked great. I'm not really using a pattern--just ribbing the top and keeping the sole smooth and I haven't decided what kind of heel I'll do yet. But it is very nice to have something so cheerful to knit and so portable; way better than wrestling with a big sweater when I go out (sweaters are better for in-front-of-the-dvd player knitting).

Yesterday I spread the pink into the kitchen by making 3 pints of pickled red onions.
I was going to do Orangette's recipe, but then I happened upon David Lebovitz's much simpler lazy-person's version and went with that. Mine aren't quite as brilliantly pink as his--some of my Tantre torpedo red onions were almost white on the inside so there wasn't as much pigment to seep out into the brine. But they should still be a cheerful accompaniment to the burgers I'm planning on making soon.