The most recent time I needed to buy more polenta for the leafcutter ants, our grocery co-op was all out of the stone-ground organic polenta I'd been buying for them. There wasn't any prepackaged polenta available, either, so I had to go with the inorganic (har har) polenta instead.

This might seem trivial, but it can be a major concern when feeding human food products to lab insects. I'll never forget the time when we discovered that a source of wheat germ must have had some sort of Orthopteran growth hormone inhibitor in it, when our crickets weren't able to molt into their adult form properly. A rearing issue like that can set us back by more than 2 months, especially if it isn't something we can catch until the crickets hit adulthood! Thankfully we were able to find a different source of wheat germ soon thereafter; organic wheat germ is all but impossible to find in the US, so it's kind of a gamble and we have to use specific suppliers.

Anyway, all signs suggest the leafcutters are totally happy with the non-organic polenta. Whew. I also find it extremely pretty when I am pouring out helpings for the ants, I think just because it has such a uniform grain size and color as compared to the stone-ground stuff (which is probably healthier, maybe? My guess would be stone-ground has more fiber.). Feeding it to the ants every week, I developed a desire to cook and eat a polenta-based dish myself.

My mom gave me a recipe for polenta served with black beans that she fed me last year in Seattle, so that's what I decided to make.

I had a funny moment while getting ready to cook the polenta itself, in the midst of trying to follow the recipe: Wait, how does cooking the polenta work?? (part of this is the recipe talks about microwaving the polenta but I don't really have/use a microwave). Then, 60 seconds later, Oh yeah, right. You've been cooking polenta for ants for YEARS. You know exactly how to cook polenta, silly goose! (I only cook it for the ants when trying to add in other ingredients)

It is kind of funny to go back to cooking polenta for humans on a stove, after so many rounds of cooking polenta for ants in a beaker on a hot plate. The stove method is much more convenient, let me tell you.

I also roasted up a butternut squash and sauteed up some kale that needed to get used, to go with the polenta and black beans. Dinner was a bowl full of comfort food.



Thanksgiving preparations are also starting. I am joining a local friend for a low-key Thanksgiving, but volunteered to make my usual Portobello Wellington, plus a pumpkin-apple-pecan pie. So today I am simmering a batch of Mushroom Essence, which you can see on the back burner there, and I roasted up this giant pumpkin:



I forget what type this is, with the blue-gray skin and the bright orange, dense flesh, but this is my all-time favorite kind of pumpkin. The flesh is sweet and super rich! It smelled amazing after roasting. I'll only wind up using a smidge of it in the pie. I'm going to try and avoid just hoarding the rest. I think in the near future I'll make a pumpkin-peanut soup, and maybe also some pumpkin pancakes, yum. And then I'll put the rest in the freezer stockpile.