The Farmessorians 2011 Pumpkin Pie Adventure
Long Island Cheese pumpkins, Shatto dairy & Boone's Farm eggs crafted by Chef Mike & Lerry into an artisan treat just in time to grace your harvest table
|
![]()
Click it, print it and return it to Lisa or Hermione by Nov. 18 to get yours.
|
....and that, Grandma, is where pumpkin pie comes from!
_Pumpkin Tales
There's a truly glorious thing that happens when you put 2 guys with ponytails and an appreciation for food out in a vegetable patch with sunshine: Pumpkin Pie! Since there was a basket of pumpkins left over after everyone got their share, Lerry & Chef Mike decided to pool their talents and create some decadently exquisite dessert to celebrate the harvest. Just listening to the two of them talk is mouth-watering: our lovely pumpkins roasting in the oven, Shatto cream, aromatic spices.... It's an amazing thing when you think about it... a guy with a plow & tiller prepares the soil, turning under the organic matter from plants that have completed their life cycle... seeds get planted whose genetic heritage carries the history of many generations... rain falls and sun shines and that seed becomes a plant that draws nutrients from the soil and energy from the sun to make stems and leaves that shade the ground and make flowers that bees visit & share pollen that makes new seeds. Tiny new fruit swells and basks in the field. And sometime in the fall, some human comes back, like so many generations before, and harvests the ripe fruit, offering thanks in one language or another. Most of the pumpkins this year in the Farmessorians garden are Long Island Cheese pumpkins, a moschata squash that traces its ancestry back through the Long Island, NY area in the 1800's. It was favored, even then for pie over the typical orange pepo types. Imagine roasting one of those babies in a wood-fired stove, sending some young person out to milk the cow and collect eggs, and tucking into precious bins of sugar, cinnamon, cloves and ginger imported by sea from some faraway land. A special treat served through the winter months when the heat from the stove kept the house toasty warm. |
_
Actually, the genetic line of Curcubita moschata originates in Central and northern South America. Seeds shared with settlers and immigrants traveled to Europe and back. Shapes and forms and coloring changed depending on weather and environment and neighboring pollen. The essence of the defining genetics carried through and probably wandered back to the New Colonies and crossed back with curcubitae that were a staple of the Native American diet along with corn and beans - the Three Sisters. At Boone's Farm Tristan and I park the Gator on the side of the pumpkin/corn/beans patch that he helped plant, and play catch with pumpkins. The final judgement on that piece of work was that in specific, there were quite a lot of pretty good sized wierdly-shaped things hiding under the leaves, and more generally, Mom's a worse quarterback than the boys are wide receivers. With all that tradition in the air, it would seem that those with chef hats are looking to Shatto Dairy and our motley crew of chickens for ingredients. A number of words have been bandied about including brulee, cheesecake, custard... It'll be a mystery til November 23rd. And a suitable end for a pile of pumpkins that have braved the high seas of the world and the high weeds of Missouri. -from Special Edition Veggie Mail, October, 2011 Lisa Boone |