Berries and Squash: Food Notes (OT)

Photo: Green Mountain Girls Farm

Delicata squash

Off topic, two quick things. First, it's delicata squash season! My ex-girlfriend Sara introduced me to this. The aptly named delicata squash is only available for a few weeks every year, but it's a delicacy, tasty and worth seeking out. The Mennonite market up the hill from me has bounteous heaps of it fresh from the fields. It's great roasted (you can eat the rind too) or made into soup—I'll be making a big batch of delicato squash soup later today. And as a side note, the seeds, toasted, are tastier and less splintery than toasted pumpkin seeds*. A treat all around, and I commend it to you if you don't already know about it.

Second, on the food-as-medicine front, just wanted to pass along the emerging idea, possibly spurious but possibly real, that berries are good for brain health. Early studies have shown positive links between consuming blueberries (or other dark berries like blackberries and currants) and a lessening of the severity and onset of dementia, as well as improvements in memory and mental clarity. Most studies so far have been done on rodents, and no, I am not calling you a "dirty rat" in a Jimmy Cagney accent. The human studies so far are largely anecdotal or preliminary. But as the science catches up it's likely that we'll be hearing more about this in the coming decade.

I'm a fan of the idea because one of the anecdotal studies is the one I've been conducting on myself—at home I've been either eating 1–2 cups of blueberries or blackberries daily, or, usually on alternate days, drinking eight ounces of pure blueberry, blackberry, black cherry, pomegranate, or black currant (very bitter!) juice—Lakewood Juices and R.W. Knudson are among the companies that market pure berry juice. I acknowledge the possibility of suggestibility (a good skeptic is also skeptical of him- or herself), but I'm sensitive to the workings of my own brain, and I notice a distinct improvement in my mentation since I started this experiment—I believe I'm thinking more clearly. Names, increasingly a bugbear for our aging brains, are definitely popping up more readily. Moreover, that thick foggy feeling of mental fuzziness and muzziness that comes and goes, and which I hate, is noticeably ameliorated.

Sold.

Concord grape juice is also believed to confer benefits, and in the U.S. a traditional drink for many years has been Welch's Grape Juice, which used to be pure Concord grape juice. (Read up on the history of Concord grape juice if you're interested—it's fascinating.) Alas, all I can find from Welch's in the numerous supermarkets I've checked are Concord juice blends. Not good enough. You want to stay away from juice blends in general—one of the (many) great swindles in the modern supermarket is the fact that "100% fruit juice" is very often mostly apple juice, no matter the label on the bottle or the color of the juice, and apple juice is very close to just plain sugar water.

Even pure berry juices do contain sugar, and that's a dietary liability, but take it from me, a guy can only stand to eat but so many blueberries. (Although if you have a Vitamix, here's a great way to get more. You'll want to pit that date!)

Google "blueberries and dementia" for more. A lot of what you'll find will be echo-chamber stuff, and yes, it's possible that this is just a fad, one of those cases of an earnest folk remedy raised up high on a great airy cushion of hope. But then again, garlic really does have about the same antibiotic power as early penicillin, so sometimes folk remedies are real.

My dear Mom has dementia, and she hates it. So my view is, eating more berries might not help, but it seems to, and, since it sure doesn't hurt, I'm in.

Mike
(Thanks to Sara)

*A guilty confession—the delicata at Windy Acres is so cheap that, as the end of the season nears, I'll be buying a basket full just to roast the seeds. Wasting the flesh of this squash is a sin, but less of a sin than letting those heaps of delicata turn to compost!

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Kenneth: "Delicatas are the perfect squash. They're the perfect size to bake as a side dish for two. I like to brush them with salt, pepper, and herbes de Provence mixed into a little olive oil. I've also enjoyed them with Indian seasonings (cumin, coriander, and garam masala). They're great with baked salmon or salmon cakes. Finish off the plate with a rice pilaf and you've got a 'special' night's dinner that really didn't take all that much work. And because this is a photography blog, you are required to take a picture of your dinner. Send it to your friends. They will be jealous."

Alan Carmody: "Delicata squash from the Mennonite farmers up the road! Mike, the evidence that the move to upstate New York was a wise one keeps piling up. :-)  "

JimR: "Mike, years ago while touring wineries in the Finger Lakes (I can't remember which one) there was a winery selling 100% fresh pressed Concord grapes, and it was delicious. Check with a local winery; even if they don't do this they'll know who may be."

Mike replies: After I got your comment, I did a little Googling, and—although I don't know if it's the winery you remember—discovered that Barrington Cellars sells Concord grape juice. Barrington Cellars is, in country terms, a neighbor—I tell guests to turn at their sign to get to my road, and, if one doesn't mind walking up and down steep hills, a person could walk there from my house. So I now have a quart of locally grown, 100% pure Concord grape juice in my fridge, thanks to you, Jim. And a handy local supplier as well.

The juice is so sweet I might mix it with black currant juice (which is not sweet at all, but very bitter).

Many thanks!

Comments

[Scott]

"Wasting the flesh of this squash is a sin"

Cook it and freeze it and eat it all year.

"only available for a few weeks every year"

Here on the West Coast, the season is much longer. I would guess that's true in the South as well.

Enjoy.

[Benjamin Marks]

As long as we are "long" on food rumors, there has been a persistent one that squash seeds are good at warding off seasonal affective disorder (SAD). No idea whether it is true or not, but it makes me smile when I eat pumpkin seeds or any of the others from edible fall squash. We roast 'em salted. Yum. Happy Fall.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I've never had delicata squash, but now I want to try to find some. Thanks for the tip. Maybe you can make extra soup to use up the waste from the seeding operation. I've had success freezing butternut squash soup.

[c.d.embrey]

I try to eat healthy. Lots of chicken and fish, edamame, berries, brown rice instead of potatos, etc, etc.

I also drink green tea, which brings me to a pet peeve—why do the supers only sell decafe green tea?? Decafe coffee and tea makes about as much sense as non-alcohol vodka.

[Eric Rose]

Just a small point and really it's probably only a "thing" for me but I prefer to refer to past girlfriends or wives as "former girlfriend" or "former wife". Seems more civilized and less hostile to me at least.

[robert e]

Even if it is a fad, at least it's a tasty fad. I'll take that kind any day! (Though maybe not *every* day...)

Actually for some applications garlic seems to be even more effective than the latest antibiotics. But that's fresh, raw, crushed (or chewed) garlic. And raw onion may have it beat as far as spectrum. But since they work in different ways, combining the two may be best.

[Giulia]

A very nice post :) I'll become a berry-eater soon, then.

[Anthony Shaughnessy]

I'd recommend eating lots of berries just for the reason that they're delicious. Seems to me that eating a good variety of natural foods simply because they taste good is a good way to stay healthy.
Anthony

[Andrew]

I expect the flesh would freeze well. No need to throw it out.

[Z]

Delicata sliced and roasted skin-on is glorious. I've been looking forward to it all year! A very photogenic squash as well.

[Alex]

Freezing does rupture a lot of cell walls in the squash, like most other vegetables. So does cooking, of course. Roasted and then freezing it works best, though it will probably only be suitable for soup at that point. Of course, you can also make a few gallons of soup and freeze that--and it's lovely to have a quart of dinner handy in the dark of January.

[Earl Dunbar]

Can I also recommend spaghetti squash? Cut it lengthwise, scoop out the seeds (may be roastable, I dunno) wrap in plastic wrap, cook in the nuker. Scoop out then add your favourite sauce, olive oil & garlic, whatever ... Guido's your uncle, you've got a delicious alternative to pasta.

[Scotto]

I'm also a cook for one or two. I recommend putting soup and sauces in sandwich sized freezer bags. When I make a large batch of soup or stock, I'll portion them out into the bags, remove the air, and stack them flat in the freezer. Once frozen, they can be stacked on their sides like files or books on a shelf.

[René]

Sure case of the placebo effect. I quote: "In one study involving asthma, people using a placebo inhaler did no better on breathing tests than sitting and doing nothing. But when researchers asked for people's perception of how they felt, the placebo inhaler was reported as being as effective as medicine in providing relief."
I doubt we will ever see a single solution for a problem as complicated as Dementia. But all those juices do contain a lot of sugar...