This is what a sweet potato looks like when it’s been damaged by voles.  Pretty ugly, eh?  But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there’s no harm to the sweet potato — you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual.  Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens.  But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets.  So when you’re hitting the farmers’ markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap ‘em up!  They’re a bargain, and  you’re rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.

I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in this week’s CSA box, and a few onions.  I’d picked up some wonderful linguica from a local sausagemaker a few weeks earlier, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer.  It’s a blustery day here in Southwest Ohio, with the first sleet of the season.  Soup seemed like the perfect choice.  So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups:  Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder.

Read more of this story »