Eggs, Squash, Tomatoes and More

Eggs and Squash

On a beautiful fall day we ventured out to visit our friends near Usson. Wow! Pretty clouds!

During our visit that included a lovely lunch we were gifted two spaghetti squash-- two huge spaghetti squash! The variety might be called stripetti. The squash gets another wow! These were huge.

Squash #1 weighed 3543 g  (7.8 lb)

Squash #2 weighed 2834 g  (6.2 lb)

We enjoyed them in several ways including topping the cooked squash with a celery leaf and walnut pesto. Yum! The "noodles" of this squash are not yellow in color but instead looked more like rice noodles.

We were also gifted 6 eggs provided by our friends' chickens. The chickens are different varieties so they lay different colors of eggs. We were told which chicken, by name, provided each egg, but I can't find where I recorded the information. Boo hoo. One of the chickens is named Daisy.

After one near miss and then the loss of one chicken by "buzzards" per my friend, the group is now penned under netting. The posts and netting are moved daily so the chickens have a fresh grazing spot but are kept safe from overhead attacks. I guess it's worth it to protect the chickens.

Tomatoes

On a day in early November when we knew temps were going to drop into the upper 30s for the first time, we made the decision to harvest the remaining small cherry tomatoes on our tomato plant. There were 3 reddish ones but the rest were green.  We harvested 115 tomatoes. They ranged in size from pea size to small cherry tomato size. We decided to pickle them. The tomato pot is now empty. Tomato season was over. 

This is a very small jar of pickled green tomatoes but all 115 are in the jar!

Miscellaneous Veggies

Recently we noticed 2 vegetables that we need to try. We spotted them in the root veggie area of the produce department.

The first is called  Navet boule d'or -- in English this is a golden ball turnip- an ancient veggie making a comeback. Not found too often but they have them here this time of year. It was difficult, if not impossible, to find most root veggies while living in Indonesia so this is great.

The other veggie is Topinanbour. This is a Jerusalem artichoke, sunchoke, or sunroot. I recognized Jerusalem artichoke but not the Topinanbour name. Honestly, I wasn't used to seeing them or eating them at all. Maybe they are available where you live. Apparently, the Topinanbour is also making a comeback.  The texture is supposed to be similar to water chestnuts and they are said to have a nutty flavor.