October 9th, 2008 by Margie

I am really noticing all the babies…baby chard, baby lettuces, baby bok choy.  But not just in the fields, I was introduced to a beautiful baby girl just over a week ago, baby Justine.  Tuesday when I went to pick up goat cheese for some of you at Mary’s goat farm, she introduced me to two adorable baby goats.  Oh!  A baby goat is a sweet sweet sight!  I am surprised I let go of the one she let me hold.

I suppose I am seeing life and new life all around.  Let’s really enjoy that this month.  The season shows us leaves are dying, the sun is changing positions in the sky, the the temperatures are falling but all these signs of fall and winter coming are just different ways that nature continues to foster life.  The colder days will help our fall greens.  I can’t wait to get more and more crops of lettuce and cooking greens.  The greens you have this week are young swiss chard, beautiful and tender.  They are easy to cook up if you enjoy greens with a little olive oil and garlic, this is perfect for the chard.  Just cook them less time than you might a hardy kale.

The recipe this week is the way I have been cooking my okra the last few weeks.  It seems weird for me to even say “my okra” since I have always hated this vegetable!  Hate is a strong term for a food product but okra had a special place.  To think that I am not only eating okra but cooking it for myself, alone, when no one else is here, is amazing!  I hope for you that at some point you find a new relationship to a vegetable you thought was not for you.  I was a vegetarian as an adolescent because I thought I hated meat.  When I grew up and moved to New York, I realized that I did not hate meat.  I hated cheap meat!  My family was a working-class southern family and the only steak I knew was “cube” steak, need  I say more!?  The reason I share this is because I am hearing stories of vegetables that people hated as a child but most of the time it is the way the vegetable was prepared that was so distasteful.  Not all of us like boiled okra (whew!) or brown sugar gobbed on our sweet potatoes.  To me, hearing that someone is eating something that they thought they did not like at all and now they love it is a story of a new life of sorts….sooo….

Here’s to all the babies!!