Slow Food Fast

Some time back I was bemoaning the lack of reasonably priced butternut squash at the height of the season in my local markets–I was clearly spoiled by last year’s bargains, or so I figured. So when I tried making pumpkin ravioli at home, I substituted yams, which were a lot more plentiful and much less expensive per pound.

But as it turns out, there’s more to the missing squash mystery than I realized. Just before Thanksgiving last year, Libby’s sent out a public warning that they were facing deep shortages due to heavy rains during harvest in central Illinois, where most of their pumpkins are grown. Heavy rains and soggy fields meant harvesters couldn’t get out every day to pick, and a lot of pumpkins mildewed on the vine and had to be plowed under. Oregon’s organic pumpkin growers, who had an unusually good crop, were able to  step in as an alternate source for buyers running short, but organic pumpkins are still only a few percent of the national consumption each year.

Following on a short crop in 2008, the Midwest is looking for a better harvest this fall, but right now the shortage is pretty noticeable on store shelves. A global produce outlook web site even posted a recent factoid that, at the moment, Libby’s remaining inventory of 100% packed pumpkin stands at something like six cans. Six.

According to the article, people have been bidding up to $30 a can on eBay for those extras you probably squirreled away in the corners of your pantry and never got around to making.

But it still doesn’t explain why winter squash was so scarce and expensive in California this past year–unless our supermarkets were importing all the way from Illinois as well. Hmmmph.

Where’s the Charlie Brown Theme Song when you really need it?

In any case, yams and sweet potatoes nearly the size of footballs have been pretty plentiful in Southern California, and cheap with it. There’s very little waste on a sweet potato–just the peel, usually (or buy organic, if you can find them, and scrub them well before cooking so you can eat the peel too).

So I’ve been finding a place in my refrigerator for them and microwaving them in a lidded pyrex bowl or casserole with a little water in the bottom for about 8-10 minutes (for a big one). Because I don’t like the prospect of nasty kitchen accidents, if I can’t cut into them easily right away I wait to split these monsters in halves or quarters about 6 minutes into the cooking time, when they may not be fully cooked yet but at least they no longer require an axe.

Sweet potatoes and yams substitute pretty well in standard pumpkin pie recipes, but you generally have to bake twice as long as for the canned pumpkin, which has had a lot of the water cooked out before it was packed. They also make  good fillings for large ravioli–pretty easy with wonton or gyoza wrappers, and microwaveable too.

But…it’s now June in Los Angeles, which means “June Gloom” overcast cool weather in the morning, burning off to the mid-90s by lunchtime. And my daughter looks at the huge quarters of yam cooling on the counter and says, suddenly, “I wish we could have pumpkin ice cream instead.” I think about it and decide I wish that too.

I have buttermilk, regular milk, sugar and a variety of pumpkin pie-type spices on hand. I don’t think I’ll need eggs because the sweet potato has so Continue reading →

Filed under: cooking, Dairy, DASH Diet, Desserts, frugality, kid food, Microwave tricks, nutrition, Revised recipes, Vegetabalia | Tagged: buttermilk, ice cream recipes, Illinois, Libby's, microwaving sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie ice cream, pumpkin shortage, sweet potato ice cream, yam ice cream | Comments Off on Sweet Potato Ice Cream