When I spot Epic Roots mache in the salad greens aisle, I invariably start humming Macho Man, the 1970s dance tune by the Village People. The pronunciation of the word has more in common with 1980s mosh pits (rhymes with posh), but I’ll use any excuse to hum the tunes of my youth-in the grocery store, of course.

Yet beyond my in-store musical salute to the waning days of disco, what I’m really excited about is the novelty and sweet flavor of this salad green. I eat a lot of leafy greens and raw vegetables, and even with a plate of frilly bits (as I refer to mesclun), I longed for something new and different to chew on. Frilly bits were starting to feel so 1990s.

I had been reading about lamb’s lettuce, as mache is also known, for a few years, and last growing season even purchased seeds so that I could grow it at home. At the time, mache wasn’t easy to find in Texas, and in the Lone Star State, we home gardeners are typically able to grow salad greens in the seven cooler months of the year. Sadly, my first efforts came to little, due to overzealous thinning.

By now, though, many Whole Foods Markets carry mache, either on its own or in mixes. The real pleasures of this rosette-patterned green are its substantial, yet tender texture, and the taste, which is a mild, nutty-tasting foil to other, slightly bitter winter greens like arugula.

Cultivated in Europe since the 17th century, mache is still somewhat of a specialty green in the United States. However, NPR did a piece on mache a few years ago, so it could even overtake arugula in popularity over time.

Because of its low growing habit and size, mache is typically harvested by hand, leading to a slightly higher price compared to other salad greens in the produce aisle. Let’s take a look beyond its upfront cost to value, especially nutritional value. A 50 gram serving of mache (an amount that would be the basis for an entrée-sized salad) can provide nearly 30% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin C. That same 50 grams weighs in at around 10 calories. Packed full of beta-carotene and Omega 3s, the soft, buttery leaves also provide plenty of antioxidants. Plus mache provides nearly a third more iron than a comparable amount of spinach.

For this enthralled fan, the flavor and texture more than make up for the few extra cents I’m spending per salad. Since I’m in the early phases of infatuation, I’m still eating my mache in rainbow-hued raw salads, but I’ve also thrown it into soups and sautéed some along with spinach and green onions in a light olive oil. If you’d like to try something a bit fancier, this Crawfish Cakes with Wild Ramps, Mache Salad and Orange Chili Vinaigrette recipe looks luscious! Or try the recipes on the Epic Roots website.

Now to get those seeds planted again…

I lived in Alaska for a few years, where almost everything is a lot bigger than Texas. The sight of 800 pound (and heavier) pumpkins at the State Fair in Palmer is simply astonishing. Kitschy postcards of pumpkins the size of tool sheds date back to the 1950s, at least, and show up yearly in local newspapers. How in the world, I wondered, is it possible for a pumpkin to attain the heft of a horse? As I was soon to learn, cool weather crops such as pumpkins and parsnips attain gigantic girth in the long daylight hours of the growing season at such high latitudes. In the more temperate latitudes of Tennessee, where I also lived, farmers were justifiably proud of their 180 pound pumpkins, and even they were the very devil to move out of the field without the help of a mule or a sturdy field hand with a wheelbarrow.

For a workaday squash, the pumpkin has found its way into numerous literary tradition and mass media treatments over the last two centuries. For example, the Great Pumpkin embodied the inexplicable hopes of cartoonist Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts characters as Halloween approached. A benign, all-powerful vegetable being, or so thought Linus, the Great Pumpkin never actually made an appearance, leaving us all to wonder at the mysterious squash’s actual powers and intentions. The idea of pumpkin carols, as Linus hoped his friends would sing, always appealed to me. Who does not want to glorify in song the sight of a field of large pumpkins after the rest of the harvest is in, glowing a soft, dusty orange among the fading browns and golds of surrounding trees and grasses?

Followers of Alexander McCall Smith’s Botswana-based No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series may recall that In the Company of Cheerful Ladies the main protagonist, Precious Ramatse, discovers a fine pumpkin on her front porch one morning. As her fans know, the traditionally-built Precious is fond of her bush tea and her pumpkin, a regular staple food in Botswanan culture. Precious spends considerable effort trying to resolve the mystery of who would leave such a nice pumpkin on her porch without stopping in to declare its origin. Although the mystery of the pumpkin benefactor is never solved, I find this a kinder, gentler literary treatment of the pumpkin than that of the nineteenth century Legend of Sleepy Hollow, where a pumpkin replaces the head of the terrifying headless horseman. We never learn how or why the pumpkin was chosen to replace the head, but we’re unsettled when it shows up atop the empty shoulders of the spooky creature.

The mysterious pumpkin is truly one of the most seasonal vegetables in our modern public consciousness and our American culture long ago designated the pumpkin a Halloween icon. It seems that 50% of the annual pumpkin crop is diverted for use as Jack-o-lanterns for the spookiest day of the year. If you didn’t catch it earlier in the month, James Parker’s delightful post on how to carve the perfect Halloween pumpkin is worth reviewing for ideas on how to achieve the handsomest Jack on your block.

Yet the pumpkin, which comes in several sizes and varieties, provides important nutrition, including plenty of protein and Vitamin A, in the form of its dried seeds and firm flesh. Along with the usual suspects this time of year—pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread—my absolute favorite pumpkin dish is a savory Curried Pumpkin Soup. Two other savory runners up are Pepita Encrusted Redfish and Enchiladas with Pipian (pumpkin seed) Sauce, which you can find in Interior Mexican restaurants.

I typically invite a mob of people to dinner at my house in the fall and plan the meal around pumpkin soup. This year I made individual, savory spinach cakes and a wild rice, butternut squash and shitake and morel mushroom side dish to provide substantial accompaniments. A fluffy green salad completed the table. No one leaves hungry and both vegetarian and vegan, as well as gluten-sensitive, folks are accommodated.

Does this menu sound like a lot of work? I fed 20 people and spent less than two hours in the kitchen. You’ll notice the shortcuts below. I also use a lot of 365-brand products to keep the costs down, especially on organic items.

Photo courtesy of Ms. Glaze via Flickr

Curried Pumpkin Soup: 2 hours total
Serves 20 (6 oz. cups) or 10 (12 oz. bowls)

• 1  large onion
• 6  cloves peeled garlic
• 2  TBs coconut oil
• 1 or 2 medium sized sweet potatoes
• 1  32 oz. container organic Vegetable or Mushroom Stock
• 1  12 oz. can organic Pumpkin
• 2  32 oz. containers Imagine Butternut Squash Soup
• 2 to 3  TBs fresh mild curry powder
• 1  12 oz. can lite Coconut Milk
• 2  TBs apple cider vinegar

Optional garnish:

• Half-n-half or plain yogurt and water (2:1 ratio) for a finishing swirl
• Spicy pumpkin seeds (or plain)

Dice onion and garlic and sauté in coconut oil on medium heat until transparent. Add vegetable or mushroom stock, then add cubed sweet potato; cook on medium heat for 20 minutes until soft. Reduce heat to medium low, add canned pumpkin and stir into broth. Add both containers of Butternut Squash soup, along with curry powder. Cover and let flavors blend on low heat for 30 to 45 minutes. Thirty minutes prior to serving, add lite coconut milk, continuing to cook on low heat. Do not overheat as coconut milk can curdle at higher temperatures. Ten minutes prior to serving, add apple cider vinegar and adjust seasoning with additional curry powder, if needed, and salt and pepper. A small swirl of cream or liquid yogurt makes for a pretty presentation once the soup is in a tureen or bowl. Sprinkle a few pumpkin seeds on top. Vegan guests will appreciate a spicy pumpkin seed garnish.

Spinach Cakes: 45 minutes total
12 cakes:

• 16    oz. frozen chopped organic spinach
• 3  extra-large organic eggs
• ½  cup organic cottage cheese
• 4    oz. shredded parmesan or Three-Cheese Blend
• 2    cloves chopped garlic
• 8  large basil leaves, chopped
• 3    TBs pine nuts (pumpkin seeds are a good substitute)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Olive oil for muffin pan
• ½  oz. shredded parmesan for topping

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place frozen spinach in a large bowl for 15 minutes of thawing at room temperature. Break up any large clumps at the end of that time. Crack eggs and whisk. Slowly add in cottage cheese, parmesan, and finely diced garlic. Chop basil and add with pine nuts (or pumpkin seeds). Add liquid mixture to spinach and mix thoroughly. Add a few shakes of salt and twists of the pepper grinder. Use a 12-count muffin pan and spray with olive oil (or wipe cups with olive oil). Fill each cup with mixture and add a sprinkle of parmesan atop each portion of mixture. Place tray in 400 degree oven and bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until spinach cakes are firm to touch with a spoon. Let muffin pan cool for 10 minutes on cooling rack before removing cakes to a plate. Loosen sides gently with a table knife. *Bonus: Cakes freeze well for use in brown bag lunches.

Harvested in the Mesilla Valley of New Mexico for a few weeks of the late summer, Hatch chilies are a cultivar of the common New Mexico green chili developed at the Chile Institute at New Mexico State University in the 1920s. The Mesilla Valley runs from Las Cruces north to Hatch, nearly forty miles, in the south central part of the state. The Hatch Chile Festival occurs annually each Labor Day weekend and draws up to 30,000 people from around the world to the tiny town of less than 2,000 residents.

Grown nowhere else in the world, the large, almost leathery chilies feature a vigorous, earthy flavor unlike any other chili. Although there are several varieties grown, the types found in Central Texas, where I shop, are typically the milder “A-8″ and the fierier “Big Jim.”
If you are tentative about trying a new chili, let me assure you that these are closer to “tingle on your tongue” than “tears in your ears.” The Scoville heat rating for a typical Hatch chili is no more than 2,500, and often closer to 1,000, while a jalapeño (the state appetizer of Texas) hovers around 5,000, and a habanero pepper can top 250,000. What’s the Scoville heat rating, you ask? This system measures the piquancy (or heat) of a chili by referencing the amount of capsaicin (a chemical compound that stimulates receptor nerve endings in human skin and mucous membranes) contained within. The Scoville heat units (often referred to as SHU) indicate the amount of capsaicin present in a typical pepper pod.

Sorry. My inner science nerd bubbled up in between stuffing blue corn tortilla chips and Hatch chili salsa in my mouth. Yum.

What else can you do with the fabulous pods?  What about Hatch Green Chili Stew? I make mine with a combination of roasted and unroasted Hatch chilies. To roast them at home, I place the chilies on a meat fork and rotate them slowly over a gas burner until they start to pop, let them cool on a metal rack or paper towel, then peel the tougher outer skin. I throw garlic and onions into a cast iron kettle, braise any meat or tofu I intend to add, then add plenty of chopped Hatch chilies (at least six), along with a chopped potato, cilantro, cumin, black pepper, four cups to six cups of stock, and eventually, a chopped tomato or two. Tomatillos are great if you have any on hand, and canned tomatoes can also be used. For another fun dot of color, I sometimes add chunks of butternut squash. Like the potato, the squash helps to even out the fire of the hotter chilies, while it absorbs the melded flavors in the stew. As ever, the fragrant, slightly spicy meal is better the next day.

I also chop the chilies and add to the center of turkey, buffalo, or grass-fed beef patties that I form myself and freeze for later single serve meals. Hatch chilies can take the place of just about any pepper you might use in stir fries or garnishes. Even though I’m crazy about yellow crook-necked squash fried quickly in olive oil with garlic and onions, with lots of fresh ground black pepper on top in early July when the squash starts coming on, by late summer I’m no longer so enchanted with the same old, same old. Chopping up a hatch chili and sweet potato to add to the mix adds sweet and spicy body and interest to a dish now more suited to the approach of autumn.

But remember, you only have a few weeks to enjoy Hatch chilies at their peak, and the season is quickly coming to a close. If you can’t find them, make a note to look for them next August. Your taste buds will thank you. If you can still find any, make sure you procure enough to freeze, well-protected, for later in the year when your appetite needs a spicy nudge. Then, like a postcard from late August, the chilies will take your taste buds back to summer’s last hurrah.

Note: Hatch chilies are not available in all stores, and fresh Hatch chilies have a very limited season. Check with your local produce team to find out more.

On a Saturday promising to top 103 degrees, I arrived early at our local Kyle Market Days, conducted monthly in this former railroad town 15 miles south of Austin. I stopped off for a few minutes to visit with Tim, our local organic farmer, who had culinary herbs and plants, plus tiny amounts of garlic and peppers on offer. The big rain associated with Hurricane Dolly last week dampened the soil enough to allow his late summer/fall crop seedlings to sprout. We’re all crossing our fingers that the 2008 hurricane season doesn’t further damage any of our coastal towns, but will bring welcome moisture from the Gulf of Mexico to central Texas. We’re already matching the record-setting temperatures of year 2000 for days above 100 degrees, and we’re only in early August.

The largest display of “local” produce was from a small farm in Geronimo, Texas, about 20 miles away. This part of central Texas has deep, rich Blackland Prairie soil, therefore raising a variety of vegetables is easier than in the Hill Country’s scant dusting of dirt atop bedrock. The tables and bins of vegetables and melons included the last of the farmer’s cabbages, gorgeous colored peppers and tomatoes, four kinds of squashes, hearty tomatoes, and glorious spears of okra. I excitedly grabbed a tub of okra, a few zucchini, some onions, and a basket of very ripe tomatoes.

I had in mind a mid-summer okra stew, perhaps flavored with a few Whole Catch scallops & Key West pink shrimp, and/or the store-made chicken sausage waiting in the freezer. I’ve never made a successful roux—I don’t think Yankees have it in their genes—and didn’t have any file or mud-bugs (crawfish) on hand, so gumbo was a no-go. Okra stew comes pretty close, though.

Unfortunately, the tomatoes never made it into my market bag, overlooked while the farmer warned me of the unscrupulous vegetable peddlers at a nearby farmers market, where vendors allegedly buy veggies from a national distributor and try to pass them off as homegrown. Angry about this fraud toward consumers, she never finished putting the veggies in my bag—almost as if my getting the bona fide homegrown vegetables were beside the point.

Okra is arguably the most glamorous crop plant in a garden, all luscious, spreading leaves and startling blooms, the pods growing out like afterthoughts. As a member of the hibiscus family, here’s a plant that is both ornamental and edible. I love the earthy taste of fresh okra pods, and the festival shape of crosswise cut pieces, however, unless cooked with an acidic complement like tomato, the ooze factor of plain okra is more than my western-trained tongue can tolerate.

Long after the market had closed down for the day, I discovering the dearth of tomatoes as I wielded a chef’s knife to make short work of the veggies going into the stew. I had an “oh, no!” moment. Luckily I found a can of smoked tomatoes in the pantry. Into the pot they went, with garlic, zucchini, okra, and onion from the farmer’s market, three handfuls of frozen black-eyed peas, augmented with a quick vegetable stock made from simmering the outer leaves of the cabbage, the discarded tops and ends of the stew-bound produce, and some wilted celery and carrots from the fridge. After simmering on low with black pepper and a few dollops of an all-purpose “blackened seasoning” for a few hours, I divided the stew into thirds and added a handful of scallops, a half-dozen shrimp and half a chicken sausage to the pot I intended to eat over the next few days. Ladled on top of half a cup of rice in the bottom of a bowl, the hearty stew marries the flavors of the field with just enough seafood to make for a satisfying, quasi-local mid-summer meal.

*Photo Credit: Thanks to galant of The Bitten Word for your beautiful okra shot.

About the only things sprouting up on lawns this summer in central Texas are “Alarm Stage Drought” signs. The grass is crispy, some trees feature the yellow hues of autumn, and county officials and parents will be closely monitoring the few fireworks used by neighborhood kids this year. Our typical blast-furnace-August weather started in mid-May this year, and we’ve not had more than a flirty little spatter of rain since. Our June was the hottest recorded in Austin since 1854, with an average high of 99.4 degrees. Even our scrappiest cur-dogs won’t go out in this year’s noon-day sun.

My CSA farmer, Tim, told me last week that until it rains again, he had no more veggies to offer his customers. Most of his crops were withered, dried-up, kaput. As a dry land farmer in a challenging season, Tim was saving what little stored water he had for his own family’s food. The remainder of the week I worried about what this was doing to his family’s income, since he operates by a pay-by-the-week model. Many CSA farmers use a subscription payment system; in other words, people pay up front for a share in the season’s crops. It is more of a shared fate situation between grower and consumer. If Tim employed this model, each of his families would be out $40 per month maximum, in contrast to his family’s loss of $1,600+ a month. When the rains come again, we would have our organic, heritage produce, as always. In the meantime, Tim could continue to pay his bills and slowly make improvements on his farm. And we would keep him farming in the community.

What’s more, the 43 local families who rely on Tim’s weekly bags of heritage produce have many other options for obtaining our fruits and veggies (although far fewer right now if we want locally-grown food). Conversely, Tim’s options for additional income when the crops fail are not so plentiful. Family farming in many parts of the country is a tremendously risky business, even when a spouse works a “regular” job to procure insurance benefits and steady income.

My concern over Tim’s family is yet another revelation in the process of tracing where my food comes from and matching a face with the source. When the food source literally dries up, and the loss affects families I know, my connection to the situation becomes more tangible. I think about water a lot these days. Other local growers still have produce available, but to a farm, each is irrigating heavily-when they can. They’re still nursing their crops to market, but their yields are lower and costs are much higher than last year. For example, the small local harvests of heritage tomatoes are selling for $6.99 a pound, whereas last year you could eat your fill for $2.00 or $3.00 a pound.

Another farm family I patronize at the Sunset Valley farmer’s market had their second well run dry. They likely can’t afford the financial gamble of boring another $15,000 well in a region where water tables are held hostage by the political and economic tension between existing agricultural and new residential demand for limited water sources. Leaf lettuce at $4 a bag doesn’t pay all that well. And the competition for agricultural vs. other kinds of land use is far from unique to central Texas, isn’t it?

My own tomatoes and peppers are too heat-stunned to set blossoms, yet I still have a few things coming on in my garden, mainly chard, herbs, and a few cucumbers, only because I’m carefully and selectively watering. I’m trying to be more aware of my water use in general. I can still turn on a faucet as easily and mindlessly as ever, but I’m deliberately wearing clothing items one or two more times-when prudent-before I wash them, taking much shorter showers, and saving the dishwater to carefully haul out to my fruit trees. In other words, I’m living as if I depended on a rainwater collection system. It is a game I play with myself to help entrain my own “mindfulness of my hand on the faucet.” I don’t have to do this, but what if I did-like millions of people around the world?

With summer starting three months early this year, I’m grateful that our distributed food system allows me access to summer’s much-anticipated bounty, even if my local food system is struggling with the combination record heat and lack of rainfall. I’m mentally expanding my definition of local by an order of magnitude. I thumped at least 30 Georgia watermelons before choosing the most resonant for my 4th of July celebration. Perfect ears of Georgia sweet corn and cheerful yellow squash from Florida sit in the fridge for supper tonight. I’ll fry the squash quickly with some Texas-grown Baby Bella mushrooms in olive oil, along with an onion and four tiny peppers from the final batch of local veggies Tim delivered. To complete the yellow-themed meal, an omelet comprised of “the world’s best eggs” from a humane producer in nearby Manor and basil from my own garden will round out my plate. I consider it a “transitional local meal”.

Although I don’t care for much meat in this heat, I may just have to sample a bit of Texas-style barbecue while celebrating the 4th of July this year. We’re having a cookout in front of our flagship store in Austin as the sun begins to sink on Friday afternoon, just before the fireworks over Lady Bird Lake take our breath away once again.

Y’all come on down and join us!

No, I’m pondering our current food system and agricultural production methods that are big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past three or four years, I have been working hard to reduce my own footprint across many fronts and I realize how many trade-offs we all wrestle with as we consider behavior and lifestyle changes. I’m slowly changing my eating habits to acknowledge the impact of my choices. In the midst of a planned community that encourages landscape conformity, I surreptitiously planted a kitchen garden and a small orchard, which I water with as much gray water as I can collect from my daily life. I secretly compost kitchen scraps and yard waste since the neighbors are certain that compost attracts rats. I joined a CSA, one where the farmer uses deeply organic and biodynamic methods—and delivers to my house! I’m still an omnivore, but I seek out wild-caught fish from sustainable fisheries, grass-fed beef, buffalo, and cage free eggs—and I’ve met the chickens on their home turf. They are deliriously happy free-range chickens.

I’ve long sought organic and wild foods, but I love coffee, and really, there’s nothing better than a fresh mango with lime, is there? And we don’t grow mangoes in central Texas, either. Those mangos travel a long way to meet me. Many of my other current food choices (Chilean apples, New Zealand kiwi fruit) still have an energy impact and I wasn’t sure how to easily go about making additional incremental changes while still eating a healthy, varied, flavorful diet.

I recently found some sources to help. The Union of Concerned Scientists sends an excellent agriculture and food-focused weekly electronic newsletter called FEED. This week’s issue linked me to two fun sites that help me calculate the carbon in a typical meal, or remind me that I can do more to live lightly where our agricultural resources are concerned. The venerable foodie site Bon Appetit offers an “eat low carbon calculator.” The Small Planet Institute sponsors Take a Bite out of Climate Change. A friend sent a simple and effective seasonal ingredient map which helps remind me that what is in season locally is a good purchase for my personal carbon scorecard. I now pay more attention to the labels on perishable products in Whole Foods Market and consciously weigh the choice between the scrappy local conventional peaches from two counties over versus the voluptuous organic peaches from 2000 miles away.

Behavior change takes time. When I write it all down and reflect, I’m truly surprised at what I’ve accomplished in the last few years. What are you doing on these fronts? How can we help?

Former park ranger Anna Madrona helped open the fourth Whole Foods Market store in Texas in 1985, leaving after a few years for, literally, greener pastures. After working in the environmental field as a cartographer, GIS specialist, archeological dig bum, and historic preservation professional, Ms. Madrona returned to Whole Foods Market in the late ‘90s on the start-up team for Whole Foods Market’s dotcom experiment. In her third incarnation at Whole Foods Market, the ever-curious Anna works as a writer and researcher in Austin. She has degrees in agriculture & resources management, geography, and public history. Her current enthusiasms include permaculture and authoring the first book in her koan mystery series.