Celebrate the last of summer by gutting some veggies!

Early fall will begin with the autumnal equinox, but The Political Palate (The Bloodroot Collective (Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea), 1980) offers so many things to do with end-of-summer produce in the late summer chapter that I'll give a few more late summer recipes and save early fall for October.

If you have a bounty of late summer vegetables in your garden, the Stuffed Vegetable Platter recommends stuffing them and serving them as a feast.

For the eggplant, bake it and scoop out its guts. Then mix said guts with a variety of seasonings, bread crumbs, and eggs. Scoop this concoction into tomatoes that have been hollowed out (reserving their guts for later).

Next up: those well-known overproducers, the zucchini!

Core the zucchini to create zucchini tubes (or "zubes"?) and then stuff with a portion of their cores mixed with onion, rice, herbs, currants, and pignoli. Place in a pan with a tamari broth.

Finally, get out the green peppers!

Remove their centers and stuff with a mixture of onions, the rest of the zucchini cores, the tomato guts, a bunch of seasonings, and the chickpeas you should have started cooking way back when this recipe began. Refrigerate all the various stuffed veggies until a half hour before serving time, when they should all be stuffed into the oven and baked together before serving with "yoghurt" or avgolemono.

To finish off this end-of-summer produce feast, serve Peach Pudding.

Even though The Bloodroot Collective focused on fresh, local food, they were clearly not "health food" proponents. Peaches over a flaky, buttery crust and under a thick sour cream and honey custard sound positively decadent. "Health food" books of the time probably would have tried to make this dessert with whole wheat flour, margarine, and tofu or maybe yogurt, but you know it wouldn't have been the same...

In any case, enjoy the summer produce while it's still abundant! See you in early fall...