Summer Ends

I'm sorry I'm late. There was a family wedding. Following that my monitor died. Amazing. the marvels of the computer age are nil without a monitor.

Well, this is the last weekend of summer, the summer we never had. This summer was the 17th coldest in the last 106 years. The average high temperature was  64.5 F and that average includes some really hefty two and four day heat waves, some over a hundred degrees. I thought about that and though we were dismayed, annoyed, and generally pushed out of shape not to have our tomatoes.... I wonder what a summer like that would be if those tomatoes had been part of our subsistence, as they would have been a hundred years ago.

Our grape growers have more serious worries. The normal summer here in Sonoma County is long with warm days and cool nights, just what the best grapes need. This year they will be two, maybe three weeks late. The sparkling wine grapes are in and safe. The rest of the whites are coming now. Will the reds get the sugar up enough to be picked before the rains come? To complicate all this one of those horrific heat spells did a job on the acid in the grape. Extreme heat, late in the season, can drop the acid considerably. The wine makers are going to earn their keep this harvest as they deal with, possibly, less than optimal grapes. Oh, did I mention that though the cost of producing the grapes has gone up a little, the price for grapes has dropped a great deal. Who says farmers don't gamble.

After the long wait, my kitchen is now awash in peppers and tomatoes. The photos, above and here, show my favorite pepper, Gypsy. It is a sweet pepper, gorgeous on the vine and beautiful on the table whether you slice it fine for salads of stuff it like I do. The pepper starts yellow, and progresses through the oranges to a lovely red. It is edible as soon as it gets the faintest orange glow so at table you can have a range of hues that decorate any fall table setting.

Recipe

Stuffed Gypsy Peppers

1 medium to large acorn squash
3 1/2 tablespoons butter (divided)
2 tablespoons sugar (divided)
1 tablespoon tequila
2 large sized Gypsy peppers

Cut acorn squash in half. Remove seeds and fiber from the cavity. Place in a greased baking pan, cut side down and bake at 350 for 30 min. Remove from oven, turn the squash cut side up and place 1 tablespoon butter and 1/2 tablespoon sugar in each cavity. Replace in oven and bake for an additional 30 minutes, more or less. Check with a fork to see if the squash is really fork tender. The fork tine should slide in very easily.

When the squash has cooled enough to handle scrape the meat from the peel with a spoon collecting all the squash and butter into a bowl. Mix together very well. In a saucepan melt together 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 tablespoon tequila. When the sugar is no longer visible, remove from heat, add the squash mixture and stir together mixing well. If the squash seems very dry, as does happen occasionally, add more butter and either tequila or orange juice. This can be done ahead of time.

Cut the peppers in half lengthwise, stem to blossom end. Remove the seeds and membranes. There are not very many in this pepper. When the squash has been prepared spoon it into the four pepper cavities. Place them in a baking dish. Divide the remaining tablespoon of butter into four parts and sink one in each squash mound. Return to the oven for about 25 minutes to warm through and soften peppers. Serve warm.

Note: because neither acorn squash nor peppers are manufactured, they vary in size. Therefore cooking times and amounts of butter and sugar can not be exact.
If hard liquor is not for you, use fresh orange juice instead.

This has nothing to do with the recipe, but for the wedding I was assigned to the task of making some "dip-ables" for the chocolate fountain. One was a biscotti  recipe that turned out to be just marvelous. The recipe is Kathleen Weber's Golden Almond Biscotti, found in her article in Fine Cooking on how to make biscotti. Because I wouldn't even consider "adapting" the recipe I can only tell you where to find it. Vol. 54, page 60, Winter 2003, Holiday baking.

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You thought you had the caterpillar pretty well diagnosed? Check this out. Thanks to Dirt du Jour for the tip.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1308342/Why-did-tiny-caterpillar-cross-road-To-form-incredible-17ft-long-convoy.html