Oh my gosh, you must have been reading my mind. Until we finish building my house, my cookbooks are in storage.
A couple weeks ago, a farmer down the road sent me some of his purple sweet potatoes. Straight away I baked one for dinner and it screamed pie in my mouth. So I have purple sweet potatoes for my thanksgiving pies this year and no recipe. And who comes to my rescue? None other than Super Mrs. C Unless you send me a warning not to use purple sweet potatoes, I will use your recipe and thank you too!
While my family loves sweet potato pie and pumpkin pie, they are particular about them. But they do not like squash pie, or sweet potatoes cut up in pieces and covered in butter, brown sugar and mini marshmallows (which is what you find at white folks thanksgivings). I'm in the mood, so I will carry on.
Regarding pumpkin pie. Most people have never tasted a pumpkin pie. Canned pumpkin is not pumpkin, but that's what most people use. Canned pumpkin is actually a variety of different squashes all mashed up together, with coloring added to make it pumpkin colored. Most canned pumpkin is butternut squash which is a very large squash, very watery and almost tasteless (compared to pumpkin). That the reason, canned pumpkin makes such shitty pies.
Not all pumpkins are created equal. Pumpkin pie made from pumpkins tastes like canned pumpkin. But pumpkin pie made with pie pumpkins can rival sweet potato pie all day long. Pie pumpkin flesh is firm, the flavor is rich and they are not watery. They are also smaller than Halloween pumpkins which are more like squash than pumpkin. Since people have been trained to use canned pumpkin, pie pumpkins are hard to find - and more expensive.
These days a lot of people put a dish of yams on their thanksgiving table and call them sweet potatoes and brag that they are fresh, not canned. Keeping my mouth shut is good manners, but gee whiz, how can anyone confuse them is beyond me.
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The shapes of my purple sweet potatoes are so unique, they all have personalities. But grocers do not buy sweet potatoes with personalities. They've spent too money training customers to 'buy' a particular shape, that won't buy 'misshapen" anything.
Fruits and vegetables that don't conform to market standards, leaves a lot of fruits and vegetables in the field, passed around farming communities or sent to food banks. In the old days, after the harvest was done, gleaners would come in and pick what was left. That's how a lot of people got their food. Gleaners used to follow the pickers down the rows during picking season too, but those days are long gone.
Today's farmworkers do the gleaning and sell the produce in road side stands. You can't buy better fruit or vegetables anywhere else in California. Its so cheap it makes you feel guilty, but its all profit for the farmworkers. $1.50 for a dozen avocados too big for market standards is a yummy deal. $5.00 for a flat of ripe strawberries, raspberries or blackberries made it worth my time to put them up for my wedding cakes.
Sad, but true, most Americans can't recognize a really good piece of fruit, or vegetable anymore. I rarely buy fruits or vegetables at WalMart - not only is the quality awful, the stuff has been sitting in cold storage, then gassed before its loaded on trucks and sent to stores.
But this week I was lazy and added three lemons and turnip greens to my pick-up order at WalMart.
I only needed a quarter cup of lemon juice for my lemon bars, but I ordered three lemons, intending to squeeze and zest them and freeze for later. All those three lemons gave me was two tablespoons of juice. Luckily, I had lime juice in the freezer, but who buys lemons that hard, with thick skins and dry flesh is beyond me. My turnip greens looked like they'd been in cold storage for a year as well. It should be illegal to sell that kind of garbage. I guess that's what I get for being lazy.
I was not amused, by my amusement over the recall of 'baby' carrots last week. There is nothing 'baby' about those carrots. People load large carrots into machines that cut and shape them into "baby" shaped sizes and grocery stores 'market' them as baby carrots. What the machines cut off during shaping, is sent to dog food manufacturers, which gives you a good idea about the quality of those big old carrots used to make baby carrots.
Okay, I'll stop. No wait, there's one more rant in me.
I have no idea what those things are in grocery store meat departments, but they ain't ham hocks. I was having company for dinner and used smoked turkey legs for my red beans and rice. Its good, but its not ham hocks. Our guests told us a farmer about twenty miles away, sold ham hocks in his little store.
Well, my daughter and I finally made it to that store and walked into hog heaven. This family raises awesome hogs, butchers them, smokes and packs their own meat. They had real ham hocks. They even had whole hams hanging in the shop (I had not seen one of those in 20 years). Their ham was perfect, nothing at all like the over salted, pressed and formed, colour added, tasteless stuff you get at grocery stores. Their farm is so clean, I had no idea there were any hogs around at all, let alone the huge herd they raise. And the prices? About half what you pay at the grocery store.
Okay, I'm done. Hope you and Steadfast Mister have a wonderful holiday. :)
