The Political Palate (The Bloodroot Collective (Betsey Beaven, Noel Giordano, Selma Miriam, and Pat Shea), 1980) starts with late autumn (October 31-- Witch's New Year-- through winter solstice), but I started posting about this book in January (early winter). That means the recipes I'm posting now are earlier in the book than the ones I started the year with! I'm sure nobody else cares, but I think it's funny.
The book does not have many recipes for holidays, as the Collective believes "that carrying on 'holiday' traditions of a system which is, per se, anti-woman, is concretely harmful to our minds and spirits." Harvest celebrations are fine, though, as long as the harvest is celebrated "without reference to the patriarchal Puritans and their condescension and exploitation of 'Indians.'" The Harvest Vegetable Platter is their way to celebrate.
The Rutabaga-Potato Puree loaded up with butter and a touch of garlic sounds like something I'd see on a cooking show now (except home cooks would be admonished to use a potato ricer rather than a food processor, lest the puree get gummy).
The Roasted Parsnips and Carrots to go with the puree represent a serious commitment to root vegetables! Plus, the sunflower seeds mixed in suggest an underlying allegiance to old-school health foods.
If that platter seemed a bit lacking to you, don't worry! There are a couple more pages! I just figured it was easier to break this recipe up. On to page two....
Next, we've got acorn squash (chosen in part because they're "womblike," and that selection criteria for a food is not weird or creepy at all) full of chestnut stuffing. I love that the bread in the stuffing is specified to be homemade. (I will admit that when I was young and idealistic, I made homemade bread several days in advance of a Thanksgiving so I could cube and dry it to use for entirely homemade stuffing. And then I got old and lazy and realized that once you mix in all the seasonings and butter and whatever add-ons you want, nobody can tell the bread is homemade anyway, so why bother? Grocery stores sell bread cubes for a reason.)
There's also an Apple Cranberry Sauce made of -- surprise!-- apples and cranberries, plus a little cider, cinnamon, and honey.
Round things out with steamed broccoli flowerets (because all the root vegetables and squash provide insufficient amounts of vegetable matter) and add a Miso Gravy.
Well, make that Miso Gravy with onion, butter, garlic, mushrooms, seasonings, and beer. Then you're fully ready to "commemorate the fruits of the earth," or at least sate a seasonal urge to cook up a big bunch of food all at once, invite people over so you can engage in arguments that got a lot louder than you might have expected catch up on each others' lives, and hope everybody eats just the right amount of food so you might have a few leftovers but not enough that you will get sick of them....
In focusing on the more traditional holiday, though, I realized that I missed out on posting the recipe for the holiday that starts this book and this season: Witch's New Year (which is technically over now anyway). Witches' Froth (or Apple Cream) is a dessert that recalls the days when people were not worried about salmonella in raw eggs.
Also, a time when apple sauce fluffed up with egg whites and flavored with a touch of honey and rum or applejack could count as a dessert. I personally think the witches are getting short-changed on this one, but eating Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins wasn't an option until 1993, and it would have gone against the Collective's anti-capitalist principles anyway.... I guess I wouldn't have made a good witch.
In any case, enjoy the harvest! I will see you in December with some recipes that are definitely not related to "the obscenity of noise and false jollity that is Christmas," as the Collective puts it.
