Vegetables: Orange and White

Well it was a soup of desire, I had made a gastronomic pedestal of orange squash, carrots and coconut milk blended with an onion.  Sunset orange.  The carrots recently available at the farmer's stall this late autumn are the sturdy sort with flavor, not the shaped, bleached desperation that haunts manufactured bags of alleged "baby' carrots.  Feh.  No wonder they are served with dressing to dip, they taste like yesterday's socks.  As a kid, we never imagined dipping carrots in anything, you pulled one out of the ground, wiped off the dirt, and got back to work weeding the row.  I think the only thing I didn't eat out in the field was bugs.  

Mom used carrots to feed us between meals rather than apples, which were more expensive and saved for bag lunches.  You hungry?  Bread and butter with cinnamon sugar was sometimes offered, but more likely it was a slice of raw potato, celery stalk, or a carrot all of which lasted longer than a gussied up slice of bread.  Raw carrots were usually large specimens back then, so when I see what are called "horse carrots" at the market these modern days, I bring home a bunch or two to keep me company.

Right now is the turn for orange vegetables: any of the hard squashes, rutabagas, the newer orange cauliflower, carrots, and varieties of pumpkins.  It's easy to round out a supper with one or two, and they keep handily well in the refrigerator.  Mom would drag home a large blue-green Hubbard squash, storing it in the cellar until a roast of some sort was to happen.   Newspapers would be spread onto the cellar floor, and she'd drop the squash, hoping for a good size crack.  What didn't come apart was broken into pieces with a hammer. The woman could beat a squash till one of them was winded, then haul the chunk upstairs to be baked in the oven.

The other color of vegetable that is showing up is the creamy white of cauliflower, pale cabbage, parsnips, and Chippewa potatoes.  Don't be put off by the lack of color, reports are out that those folks who consume the white vegetables show less of an inclination for stroke.  Back in the last mid-century, housewives were advised to mix colors at mealtime, to jolly up the husband from whatever indignation and worry he faced at the workplace.  Having a meal of Wonder bread and butter, mashed potatoes, cauliflower, and boiled chicken was showing poor form; you could at least sprinkle parsley flakes on something, for heaven's sake.  My mom went through more dried parsley than Betty Crocker herself.  

Coming winter is touted as being a hard one, a few starchy vegetables and a squash put by will be welcome in an oven, for baking on a snowy day of short daylight.   Orange reminds us of the sun, of fire, or of a warm squash lava flow on china plates; a happy color, it is most used in advertising because this is so, just walk down a grocery aisle to see how much orange is out there.  The cool night air falls over the remaining fields of last gardens, vines are tangled and brown, stalks are cut and bundled, the harvest is ending.  Get out your slippers, Papa; your lap blanket, Mama.  Children find your flannels, dogs and cats nest in beds.  Cider, chestnuts, pumpkin pie.  Good night.