Dark Days: Soupy and Dippy

Sunday, December 14, 2008

My first Dark Days challenge meal of the week was early in the week - an on-the-fly soup using stuff that I had in my kitchen and pantry.  Onions, butternut squash, Kabocha squash, tomatoes, thyme, bacon, butter, and chicken stock. 

It kind of shocks me sometimes that Winter squash like butternut and Kobacha is so hardy.  Those squash were leftover from the last few CSA share boxes!  And I still have a few more Kobacha squash out on the patio.  The tomatoes were from the CSA share, too, but they were canned (the chicken stock, too).  The onion and bacon were picked up this past weekend at the Fair Food Farmstand.  The thyme was from my garden, and I made the butter from some locally produced heavy cream.  All thrown together, it made a really great Winter soup.  Even roasted, Kobacha squash really retains good texture.

My second meal of the week was lunch yesterday - bacon and eggs!  I’m not normally a huge bacon eater, you know, just plain old bacon.  But I do love the thick, double-smoked bacon available through Fair Food every once in a while.  And the eggs were duck eggs!  I picked them up at the Fair Food (do you see a running theme here?) - they are from Hares Valley Growers. 

I’ve never had duck eggs before, so I wanted to try them in a way that would be simple: poached.  Interestingly, the yolk tasted pretty much the same but the white tasted different.  I can’t say how exactly, it was just different.  Even though I didn’t think the yolk tasted much different, there is a difference: the yolks are larger than in a regular hen egg (although the eggs themselves are the same size) and the yolk seems thicker.  For poached eggs, this is a great quality (I’m a toast dipper)!