The big three: calcium, magnesium, potassium

It’s autumn and you, me and the farmers are all clearing out the last of our produce from the 2019 growing season.

Even the eggplants, tomatoes and cucumbers are pretty much gone. 

Winter squash, however, is coming into its own. And in my garden, the leafy greens are really enjoying the cool, wet autumn weather. 

This is not scientific, it’s a crackpot theory I just came up with, but full summer is more of an antioxidant season: you get lots of berries and brightly colored fruits and veg that have a lot of vitamin C and the other  cancer-fighting antioxidants that go around mopping up dangerous free radicals (perhaps carrying anatomical Molotov cocktails) in your system. 

It’s not that autumn foods don’t have antioxidants. Pretty much any intensely colored fruit or veg is going to have some.

But autumn produce has a lot more of the essential trifecta of magnesium, potassium and calcium, all of which help regulate the muscles in your body, including and especially that most important muscle: your heart. 

In ways that are more complicated than I can explain, those three minerals work together, especially magnesium and potassium. 

And there is a general consensus among medical professionals that the very best way to get them in your body is through food. Supplements are OK but there’s disagreement, especially with calcium, about how much there should be in your pills. 

Here’s a warning: If you’re going to eat a lot of the potassium and magnesium rich foods that we’re about to talk about, maybe decrease your dose of supplements for a while. 

Or at minimum, keep an eye on how your body is functioning. If you find you’re suddenly urinating a lot or having muscle weakness, cramps and spasms, it might be a signal that you’re getting too much potassium. 

On the other hand, those are kind of the same symptoms you get if you’re deficient in potassium. In the end, as this column always stresses, moderation is excellent. Don’t go whole hog on anything. Try to eat a reasonable amount of fresh foods. Avoid canned and preserved foods, they tend to have a lot of salt and sugar and chemicals. 

Back to the squash. You will find at nearly every farm stand at this time of year an abundance of winter squash including the classic light orange butternut and the very dark green and kind of knobbly buttercup squash. Their names are similar but they couldn’t look more different. 

We won’t do a deep dive here on the differences between the winter cucurbites. 

But let’s talk about recipes. First, it always intrigues me that people try to peel or cut up these very dense, hard squash before cooking them. Please don’t. It’s dangerous. 

This is a health column, so let me suggest something easier: Roast your squash first, and then cutting through the skin will be like slicing through butter with a hot knife. 

Another autumn garden favorite is Swiss chard. Actually, Swiss chard grows all summer long but it really comes into its own at this time of year when there are fewer bugs to destroy the leaves, and when the air is cooler and there’s more rain. 

Swiss chard is a nutrition powerhouse and has lots of magnesium and potassium (and antioxidants). 

You know what else is good at this time of year and also has potassium and magnesium? Sage. 

Do you see where we’re going with this? Yes, let’s cook some winter squash with sage and Swiss chard. 

First, the squash. Put the whole thing in the oven. If it’s not too thick-skinned, you can cut it in half. Don’t try and take out the seeds. Roast it on tin foil on a cookie sheet that has sides; these squash often release a lot of liquid so you want a baking sheet that will hold the liquid in.

I usually set my oven to 375 and the squash is usually tender in a half hour or 45 minutes (you don’t want to let it get completely cooked and liquid — you just want to be able to poke a knife into it with ease).

Take the squash out of the oven, let it cool, remove the seeds and throw them away (once they’re cooked they can’t be roasted) and peel or slice off the formerly hard outer skin. 

You can do that ahead of time. 

You should also decide ahead of time whether you want to make risotto or nice fat pappardelle noodles.

This part you should do just before you eat: Take a bunch of chard (collards are also good but are less nutrient dense). Rinse them off and cut off the stems but don’t throw them away. Chop up the stems and saute them in olive oil at high heat. 

Chop up the leaves, add them to the pan.

Add a little sweetener — just a bit. If you’re not allowed any sugar, then you can try a substitute that you like such as erythritol (to learn more about this completely sugar-free sweetener, look for our story this week on Page A8). 

If you are allowed sugar, you can use honey, maple syrup, granulated sugar or a simple syrup (50/50 sugar and water, boiled down; add in some rhubarb, lavender, mint and/or ginger to make it more lively). 

I’d say for a bunch of chard the size you’d get at the grocery store,  you’d add just a teaspoon or two of sweetener.

And add in about a teaspoon of a nice thick vinegar. I like to use rice vinegar. You could probably use balsamic, or really anything. 

Salt. Pepper. Don’t overcook; remember that the leaves will keep cooking after you take them out of the pan. They’ll leave a lot of liquid, which in my opinion you should just discard.

Cook your risotto or your papperdelle noodles. Cut off a big handful of sage leaves from the nice plant in your garden (or buy them at the grocery store, or ask me; I have a lot, happy to share, you know where to find me). 

Take a large deep skillet and heat up butter and olive oil and throw your sage leaves right in. They will crisp up fast. Take them out of the pan. Add in cubes of your already-cooked squash and heat them up in the leftover sage-infused butter and oil. In my opinion, you should also add a teaspoon or two of sweetener (maple syrup or simple syrup are very good here). 

Heat the cubes up and serve them over your risotto or noodles, with the chard on the side. Grate a lot of parmesan cheese on top of the squash and rice or noodles, for the calcium leg of this nutritional trifecta.