Links: Popcorn, butternut squash, red cabbage, and other winter veggies

A use for all of the popcorn that I've been receiving lately: how to make kettle corn at home.

Some ideas for the butternut squash backlog:

• Herbed butternut squash chips
• Butternut squash goat cheese dip

Sweet and sour red cabbage. I have one and a half heads of red cabbage in the fridge.

While it's no longer fennel season, I'd like to remember this recipe for next year's fennel: fennel and mushroom puree with grainy mustard.

We've been getting lots of potatoes this winter, which has been great. A make-ahead potato gratin might be a good way to use some of them.

Beet and carrot fritters. I'm not sure about these, but am contemplating them. It seems that the beet would overwhelm the carrot.

Here's a video on how to brown butter.

Finally, for those of you local to Boston (or planning to visit Boston someday): a cool interactive map of 20 coffee shops in Boston from Eater. These long, cold, snow pile filled days call for lots of coffee. Of course, there's no place to park in Boston these days and the T is not doing well, which might make it difficult to get to these places.

Spring is coming, right?

What's in the box, 2/25/15 edition

This is the second to last week of the winter share. In general, I've liked this year's winter variety much better than last year's; it seems like we didn't get as many purple top turnips or cabbages, both of which I tend to have more difficulty coming up with new and interesting ways to cook. We've also been getting greens for several weeks now, which I really appreciate. I do, however, now have 11 butternut squash in my pantry.

In this weeks' box: potatoes, butternut squash, leeks, hakurei turnips, carrots, popcorn (which I have far too much of at this point, particularly given that the popcorn soup didn't work out), mesclun, and the daikon radish that ate New York. Yes, it is larger than the butternut squash in the photo. I'll have to make some daikon cakes soon.

What was in the box, 2/11/14 edition

Here's the box from almost two weeks ago:

Butternut squash, sweet potatoes, parsnips, hakurei turnips, beets, carrots, daikon radish, popcorn, and pea tendrils.

I don't have a photo of last week's box. I was traveling, so the box went to a family member. Instead, here's a photo of a sunrise from last week, which happily contained not a trace of snow:

Totoro cake

Back in November, I posted a link to a Totoro cake tutorial. Today, the child and I made it together.

I used this fondant recipe from Clockwork Lemon to make fondant from marshmallows, which turned out to be much easier than I expected. Child sculpted all of the fondant pieces while I piped the fur, and then child took over the last bit of piping, as my hand was getting tired.

I think it turned out very well.

[No vegetables were harmed in the making of this post. Only sugar.]

What's in the box, 2/4/15 edition

In this past week's box: purple top turnips, rainbow carrots, potatoes, butternut squash, a giant kohlrabi, watermelon radishes, leeks, pea tendrils and apples.

Fried rice

I've wanted to try making fried rice for a while. I finally did, with about three cups of leftover rice from the prior night's dinner.

I started from this recipe from the Food Network, modifying the ingredients to omit the meat and use different vegetables. I used ginger, onion, carrots, and mushrooms for the veggies.

Once cooked, they were moved to a bowl. Then I scrambled four eggs in the wok, which stuck, despite oil and teflon. Then I added the cooked eggs to the vegetables in the bowl. Finally, I cooked the rice. Here's it all mixed together.

Husband added some soy sauce to his at the table (he also had it with a piece of salmon). I left it plain. I used a lot of ginger, so there was plenty of flavor without soy sauce.

It was easy and a good way to use some leftover rice.

Failed popcorn soup attempt

As I blogged last week, I have a lot of popcorn in the pantry from this years boxes as well as last year's boxes. These are the ears that were leftover from last year alone. (The one with the husk might be even older.)

We are snowed in again today, so I decided to try this popcorn soup recipe from the NY Times. I took the kernels off of the 5 ears of yellow corn (the recipe says "white popcorn").

Then they cooked for two hours in the stock.

They rehydrated quite well.

After the blended and straining, here are the solids that I was left with...

...and the very small amount of soup.

Overall, I think this recipe, or at least my execution of it, was a failure. I used 5 ears of popcorn (3 cups of kernels), 8 cups of veggie stock, and over 3 cups of milk, just to get two half mugs of soup. Maybe the kernels were too dehydrated, as they were from last year's boxes? (I used the older ones first.) Additionally, the soup tasted like a cross between thinned grits and a chowder made with too much flour as a thickener (husband noted that there was a chalky aftertaste).

Don't make this. It is not the solution for using up a glut of popcorn.