Apricot Crumble

We received a beautiful surprise of apricots with our CSA share last week. We snacked on a few, but before I knew it they were starting to turn a little soft. I decided that they would make a lovely crumble, and I was right. I used Smitten Kitchen’s recipe as my spring board. Making a crumble or crisp topping is really pretty simple. It is always a combination of butter, sugar, flour, and oats with variations of spices or nuts added. I ended up trying this one because it called for melted butter instead of blending in chunks of chilled butter. That seemed a little faster and simpler, and I was curious what the difference in texture would be. I was really happy with the outcome! I did follow her suggestion and do half all purpose flour and half whole wheat flour. Combined with the fruit, that makes it healthy, right? My other deviations were leaving out the pecans because I did not have any and adding a sprinkle of Penzey’s Baking Spice.

I also peeled my apricots. I have never been a fan of cooked stone fruit skin, so I figured it was worth the extra step. I followed the standard method of scoring the fruit and dropping them in boiling water for a minute or two followed by a bath in cold water. The skin popped right off. Unintentionally, I ended up following her suggestion of just tearing the fruit apart. It was actually easier than trying to slice it!

I happened to be sipping on some white wine while throwing this together and R suggested I add a bit to the fruit, which I thought was an excellent idea. I used the wine to make a slurry with a bit of arrowroot starch and some sugar. I recommend arrowroot starch over cornstarch as a thickener for baked goods. For good measure, I tossed in some dried cranberries I noticed on the shelf. Excellent decision on my part if I do say so myself.

I am so happy I did this on the spur of the moment. It reminded me of how quick and easy it is to throw together a yummy dessert that takes advantage of the season’s fresh fruit. It also redeemed me from several disappointing baking endeavors from in the recent past… I suddenly began feeling under the weather after I finished putting dessert together so I ended up not eating mine last night. I can say it made an excellent breakfast this morning. It’s fruit, so it works for breakfast, right?

Oh yeah, my last production point. I used our cute-as-can-be Fiestaware individual pie dishes and made the crumble as two individual servings. I love Fiestaware!

Musings on Meat

Fresh Community Market Veggies - Yum!

Let me begin by setting the stage (or table as the case may be) for you. We sat down to dinner with Robert’s parents who are visiting Flag for a while. It was the summer solstice. The weather was beautiful so we sat outside. We had this amazing meal to indulge in together. A giant garden salad with tomatoes, radishes, carrots, salad turnips, sunflower sprouts and greens. A pile of roasted golden beets. A sweet corn and potato hash I had just encountered on one of the 1001 food blogs I read. Roasted carrots and sweet potatoes to accommodate my mother-in-law’s dietary needs.

As I surveyed everyone’s plate of food, I proudly realized that every single item, down to the onion and garlic, was either from our CSA share or the Flagstaff Community Market. Way to be local and sustainable! BUT. There was one more thing staring up at me. A big brown slab of meat. Steak to be exact. Steak that I had bought for just this purpose before knowing I was going to embark on a challenge posed by my friend Colette. Steak that after a bite or two, I decided was not really doing it for me and was filling up the space in my tummy that could be instead filled by all these amazing vegetables. I ate another bite or two and gave the rest to Robert wondering why I had even bothered in the first place.

Colette decided to take on a personal challenge to be vegan from June 19 to July 14. She also sent an invitation to all her friends to join her in this endeavor. You can check out the experience of the participants on Facebook at Community Challenge: Vegan for a Month. Her reasons for doing so? Here is a little excerpt from her invitation to us:

“However lately as I drive by the Swift plant and hear screeching pigs on the way to work or read about chicks with overgrown breasts that break their legs being jammed into wire baskets, or our that oceans will be depleted by 2050 I find myself feeling really guilty and awful about our level of consumption. Granted, I strive to eat as locally as possible, and am increasingly careful where I purchase meat and dairy down to researching how they are butchered to if they are grass finished or not. However, I can't shake the feeling that if I ate less local meat and dairy, there would be more for folks who aren't ready to be vegan.”

It should also be noted that she goes on later to admit that she is not sure worldwide veganism is the answer and acknowledges that our current food system structure could not handle such a drastic change and provide sustainably for everyone if we all immediately switched to an entirely plant based diet. She also talks more about her purpose in doing so at the blog she started with her partner Drew to capture how the experience goes. I encourage you to read at least the first entry to learn more about why they are trying out this drastic diet change. Her sister is also supporting her in the challenge and also blogging about it. She has some good thoughts and comments on food systems and sourcing as well.

Colette invited everyone to consider taking on one of four options:

1. I will go vegan from June 19 thru July 14th and encourage folks who aren't ready for it to buy local instead.
2. I will go vegetarian and encourage folks who aren't ready to buy local. I will try to source my dairy from sustainable, humane sources.
3. I will buy only local, humanely, and responsibly raised food for this month.
4. I will do challenge 1, 2, or 3, not for a month but for a day or one week.

Knowing Colette loves to eat well, and that in some ways this would be a tough challenge for her. I, of course, wanted to be supportive. So I opted for an emphasis on number 2, with a dash of 1 as was reasonable, and a little number 3 thrown in as an option to give me some leeway since I was not expecting Robert to embark on this little adventure with me. Honestly, I wasn’t troubled by the idea of giving up meat, but I wasn’t sure I wanted give up dairy and eggs. However, I mentally told myself that I would attempt to be as plant based as possible throughout this process and use dairy and eggs sparingly.

Important Things to Note

Robert and I already eat a mainly plant based diet with animal products being more of our “vice” than animal flesh itself. First of all, we like vegetables and grains. They are yummy when fresh and prepared well. This quinoa and vegetable salad is a great example of how we like to eat. Clearly, it is not vegan because of the mozzarella, but it was locally made and purchased at the Community Market. And of course, you could just leave the cheese out if you liked. For quite some time, meat has been more of a treat than what we center our meals around. Knowing the status of factory farming and acknowledging our budgetary restraints, we have mutually agreed that we would rather spend more on a small share of local beef through the CSA and stretch it out than buy $1/lb chicken breasts weekly at a big box grocery store.

Toasted Quinoa Salad

I would also like to note that I do not want to make any family or friends feel uncomfortable about their own food purchasing decisions and worry that there is judgment from us with regards to what you chose to eat and/or serve us when we are guests in your house. Of course, I will always encourage critical thinking about the topic and appreciate recognition that it IS a serious issue worthy of pause and consideration. We should all know and understand how our food is sourced and produced. What you do with the information after that is up to you. That is all I will ever ask.

The issue of using animals as a food source has been one that I have been struggling with for about two years ever since I took a philosophy class entitled Animal Ethics. I went into the class knowing the basics of our food system problems, but this class took it to a much deeper level for me and forced me to really examine my love of animals and my choice to use them for a food source. Can they coexist? Is it hypocritical to want both? I don’t have the answers… clearly. But, it was the impetus for beginning to drastically reduce my intake of animal flesh. In fact, a lot of times, it just doesn’t taste that good to me anymore. Psychological or physical reaction? Who knows.

So, you are thinking… if I am willing to do the vegetarian thing then what is the big deal with giving up eggs and dairy for a month? Here is where I am right now on these particular issues:

We can get local eggs very easily, and I believe it is an ethical choice if you have that option. The key is that eggs we get are unfertilized, which means we are not eating a future baby chicken. That hen was going to lay that egg regardless of whether or not Mr. Rooster was around to fertilize it for her. It will just eventually rot if not eaten by someone. I feel more comfortable buying from a small scale operation knowing that the chickens are be treated humanely, get to chill and eat bugs in a pasture, and are going to lay the eggs anyway. So, I guess that is why I am okay with eggs. But by doing so, I am also committing to spending almost $5 a dozen to do it right, which compared to grocery prices seems expensive. However, if you do the math, we are talking less than 50 cents an egg. Pretty cheap and healthier eats, really…. We have started exploring the use of egg substitutes when it comes to baking. We have done some experimenting and found some good options like combining ground flax seeds and water and a commercial egg substitute product that has given us good results. That also helps stretch the dollar a bit and reduces our egg intake.

Dairy…. That is a harder one. Anyone who bothers to do some research quickly realizes that for both dairy and eggs, words like “humane,” “organic,” “free-range,” etc. can have some pretty loose interpretations these days. We’d like to think that the idyllic drawing on the side of our milk carton and the organic stamp means that we are doing better… and I guess we are… but it is STILL a big corporate operation. And frankly, those animals’ lives are not really that much better than their cousins down the way as these large corporations still engage in some questionable practices. It’s a hard truth to face, but it is the reality. However, oh how I love my dairy products. Buttah (think Paula Deen when you say it to yourself), cheese, ice cream, cream cheese, sour cream, cheese (oh, said that one already didn’t I?)…. It tastes really good, and much of it is critical for proper baking.

Luckily, I know we can source locally made butter and cheeses at a fairly reasonable price at the CSA. For right now, I just don’t see dairy going anywhere in my life, and instead, I hope to make the best possible choices I can. That doesn’t mean I am not willing to try some experimenting like we have with the egg substitutes. For my first deliberate attempt at a vegan dish the other night, I made this Cosmic Cashew and Kale dish. It had some execution issues due to the type of greens I ended up pulling out of the freezer, but the creamy cashew sauce… Yep, I think I could use that as a substitute for some stuff. I know some of you are thinking, “Well, Cori, there are some lovely dairy alternatives out there made of soy, rice, etc.” My response to you, “they taste like sh*t.” Just not going to happen, boys and girls… and I could get on my soapbox about THEIR production, but we will save that for another conversation.

So back to meat. As I began thinking about all of this, I started considering whether or not choosing to eat the locally raised meat in Arizona is a sustainable and justifiable option as it is quite accessible here. Additionally, at such a high elevation with only about 75 growing days, large scale farming is not really a viable option for everyone around here. I should point out that pretty much all the produce I have been referencing is grown 1 to 3 hours away from here. What we do have is lots of open land that is perfect for grass and grazing. As a result, there are several reputable free-ranging ranches. According to this article, the climate is ideal for open land ranching and there are ways to do it sustainably and actually contribute to the ecological health of the area. Probably the best known is Flying M Ranch, which provides beef for many local Flagstaff restaurants. They are part of the Diablo Trust, which is an area land management organization with the goal of responsible and sustainable land use. The CSA sources a lot of its meat from the A Bar H Farm, which also cites sound ecological practices and humanely raised animals. I also found this gem of website, Eat Wild, which has the purpose of telling you what are your local sources for grass-fed meat, eggs, and dairy. It also shares information about the benefits of these practice: for your health, the animals’ health and the environment. Just like eggs from free-range, pastured chickens, pastured and grass-fed beef is a much healthier choice for you. The Flying M Ranch also cites several studies about why their practices make for a healthier product for us.

I guess the real question will always be, no matter how it is raised, is it ever humane to kill an animal for the purpose of eating it? For the time being, it will be up to each of us to make the decision. For me personally, I still go back and forth on the issue. However, I do find comfort in knowing that I have the option to select products where I know the animal has had the best quality of life possible. The other consideration to think over is whether or not eating meat on a regular basis can ever be a sustainable practice given the resources required to raise and process them as a food source. Not sure where you stand on all of this? Perhaps start with your own challenge. Use Colette’s guidelines above or just challenge yourself to give up something “animal-related” for a designated period of time and see if you really miss it or need it. This is also the best time to try a vegetarian diet while you can take advantage of the summer’s bounty and diversity.

When Life Hands You Grapefruits, Make Grapefruit Juice? No, I Can Do Better!

Apparently grapefruits are the April seasonal citrus that is arriving in our CSA. I don’t mind grapefruit. Occasionally, I like to eat one or have some Ruby Red juice. However, R hates the bitterness of grapefruits. Seven or eight grapefruits started seeming a little overwhelming, and I was just not in the mood for juicing and drinking them. I thought to myself, surely there are other options out there. So, I started perusing my favorite blogs for inspiration. We also had two different potlucks to go to on Easter Day. Perfect! Other people will like grapefruit, right? I won’t be stuck eating something all by myself that Robert rejects as to grapefruity.

My first adventure ended up being this recipe for Grapefruit Yogurt cake. After doing a bit of Googling, I found that this combination of yogurt and grapefruit in cake is pretty popular. I also found variations that use honey instead of sugar. Next on my list if we get more grapefruits is this scone recipe for scones: http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2011/03/grapefruit-honey-yogurt-scones/

I ended picking this specific recipe since she made it as a loaf cake, and I knew it would be easy to slice into smaller pieces to share at a potluck.

I did make the syrup, but I did not do the glaze. Really didn’t miss it. The instructions don’t say to do so, but I pricked the top with a fork before pouring the glaze to assist it in soaking in and not running off the sides and being wasted.

It had a lovely texture and the grapefruityness was subtle. (Sidenote: Apparently my grapefruit adjectives are made up as spell check is hating on them!) Even R grudgingly admitted they weren’t bad. Everyone at both potlucks gave them the thumbs up. So super easy and super tasty!

My second contribution was this Grapefruit Guacamole. It was tasty, and grapefruit and avocado seems to be popular recipe combination. Unfortunately, it did not all disappear as hoped. People did say they liked it. It was just hard to compete with the elote and regular guacamole others had made! And of course, leftovers with avocado rarely keep. It was fairly chunky and juicy, so not too easy to eat as finger food on chips. I could definitely see it being yummy on a piece of fish. Of course, that will not happen in our house unless I happen to be cooking for myself. R did not touch this one at all.

It was a super simple recipe, but sectioning citrus is a royal pain in the @$$. I am not fan… I also added a little sugar to the pickling onions as a personal preference. As I was looking up the link, I found this version. If I did ever make it again, I think I might want to add the jalapeno and garlic it calls for to really make it seems more like a traditional salsa. I might also mash it up bit to make it more dippable. Probably would would not be as pretty looking, though. Oh, and I left the cilantro out because I think it is super yucky. I forgot to take pictures, but mine pretty much looked like the one in the picture with the recipe link.

PS I really love this resource when I have a random ingredient and am seeking ideas of what to do with it. It is a search engine for food blogs. Type in your ingredients and surprise! You get all sorts of ideas. http://foodblogsearch.com/

Pickled Pink and Other CSA Food Adventures

I had to share these beauties with you.

Ironically, BEETS have actually been a rare root vegetable in our weekly share. I am truly not a big beet fan. I like to pickle them, like these, or we will grate them and turn them into a rosti (giant hash brown). On the other hand, we have received a ton of turnips and several rounds of rutabaga. These two definitely have a place on my list of foods I just really never enjoy eating. I can’t explain it really, the best I can come up with is that their flavor reminds me of how body odor smells. Clearly, that is not pleasant. Robert has snuck them into a couple of things, and I have tolerated them. Most have been given away to others whose palate preferences differ from my own.

We have also received a ridiculous amount of RADISHES. I have realized that there are just not a lot of options for radishes besides salads…. We did experiment one night with sautéed radishes and peas. They weren’t bad, but the leftovers were not great. It was an unusual way to eat them, but unfortunately, not something we wanted to repeat on a regular basis. I also pickled a large batch of them (our other pickled pink). These turned out pretty well, but again, you can only eat so many pickled radishes. I think we are done with radishes for the time being, and ironically, I just came across a recipe use for them that sounded quite intriguing: Radish Butter. You dice them up super fine and mix them with butter and some seasoning. You then serve it as a spread and/or dip. So, if I get more radishes, you know what I am doing!

Here is the sauteed radishes with peas.

We have also made some interesting PIZZAS with some unconventional toppings like butternut squash and assorted greens. It is actually pretty fun to come up with creative and tasty combinations to put on pizza. We have also put beets, carrots and broccolini on our pizzas at different times. We recently did one with spinach, caramelized onions, carrots, and fennel, and broccolini along with some chicken sausage, blue cheese and mozzarella. It was quite tasty, but I think I concluded that I just don’t like roasted broccoli that much.

Beets on a pizza? Sure, why not!

Speaking of GREENS, those continue to keep arriving week after week. I think I have enough frozen greens to last until next winter at this point! The nice thing is that I have found that you can substitute quite a few different greens for spinach. In addition to pizza, it has made its way into a veggie lasagna and a tasty tortellini vegetable soup. They have slowly grown on me as the winter has progressed. I have also found that some olive oil, vinegar, garlic and salt will work quite well with the flavor of most leafy greens

Next up is tackling all of our CITRUS. Although we both like oranges, tangelos, and tangerines, we just don’t snack on them nearly enough. I am planning to experiment with some baked goods. For some reason, although I like lemon cake, I have always thought an orange cake sounds weird. However, I am not really sure I have actually tried one. So, that is my next culinary experiment. I have read about a Portuguese Olive Oil Orange Cake that I find intriguing to try. For our first round of citrus baking, however, we ended up making these Citrus-Currant Sunshine Muffins. They were tasty, but we didn’t exactly follow the recipe, so we may need to try it again! We forgot the citrus from the orange and the lemon juice, and we didn’t have any currants. I think some dried cranberries would be tasty next time.

I was excited to get FENNEL a couple of different times. As mentioned, it made its way into a pizza. Along with our citrus, it also allowed us to make one of our all time favorite couscous salads. I highly recommend this one, and grilling fennel gives it a wonderful flavor. It is super simple and filling. Here is the link for Grilled Fennel Couscous Salad.

Other cooking adventures included this Roasted Green Chile and Corn Chowder. Although not all CSA ingredients, it did contain some red potatoes and some of the green chilies that are still hanging out in our freezer. It was quite tasty, and R made the bread bowls for it.

Finally, we have received several bags of DRIED BEANS. We have discovered the joy and ease of using our slow cooker for them. You don’t even need to soak them! Just give them a rinse, cover them with hot water and let them simmer all day long. I will usually throw some chopped onion and garlic in there, but that is about it until the last half hour or so of cooking. At that point, you add some salt and pepper along with any other seasonings you might want. I like to put some Smoked Spanish Paprika in there to keep it vegetarian but still give it that hint of smokiness that would come from cooking some sort of smoked pork product along with it. With some corn bread, it makes an amazingly simple but satisfying meal. I think I will use up the last of my canned beans, and then completely convert to cooking my own in the future. It is healthier, cheaper, and better for the environment (less processed and packaged foods means less trash).

Cleaning Out the Fridge for Holiday Travel

As I started writing this, I realized that I am becoming one of the THOSE cooks who share a recipe they threw together with lots of vagueness about what to do. However, I am not a particularly adventuresome and creative cook when it comes to making stuff up. I tend to look at cookbooks and food blogs for inspiration, so I really do keep it simple if it is something I put together without a recipe. And since this is not really meant to be a cooking blog, I don’t feel too bad. So, this week’s cooking adventure was intended to clear as much out of our fridge as possible before starting holiday travels and not do too much grocery shopping before we left. We had lots of lovely CSA goodies to use up. It also helps that I am pretty much at loose ends. I am much more motivated to cook when I haven’t been on the go all day.

Day 1: Spinach Enchiladas

I modeled this off a chicken and spinach enchilada recipe I have used as a repeated standby through the years. We have cut back our meat intake back quite a bit, so I decided to see how it was with just spinach. It was a pretty good team effort by R and I. We always forget how much we really like working together in the kitchen when we both have the time and energy. We are slowly figuring out a rhythm and pattern that works in our teeny kitchen.

Note: I realized how used to pre-cleaned produce we get. Man, that spinach was DIRTY! Had to do the whole submerge in water thing.

The filling:

I used two bags of fresh spinach. Guess I could have weighed it, but I didn’t.

Chopped and cooked down an onion till soft and brown. Added about 4 cloves of chopped garlic and the spinach. Let it all cook down.

The Sauce:

It called for 8 oz of sour cream, but I only had about half that, so I added extra yogurt and didn’t notice a difference

Original recipe called for ¼ c. plain non-fat yogurt. Clearly used more than that (see above).

About 1 ½ cups of low fat milk.

1 tbsp cumin

4 oz can of chopped chilies (we used a package of our frozen CSA chilies)

2 tbsp of flour

Mix it all up. I added several big spoonfuls to the spinach mixture to make it a little creamy.

Making the Enchiladas:

We used flour tortillas, but it would be yummy with corn tortillas, too.

Put some filling in, and roll. Yep, that simple. Biggest challenge is eyeballing it to make it stretch evenly for amount of enchiladas you are making. I can’t really help you with that one. Just use your common sense!

I recommend greasing your pan. I used cooking spray. We filled a 9 x 13 baking dish.

Dump the rest of the sauce over the enchiladas and spread it out to cover. Sprinkle with cheese.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 – 40 minutes until browned and bubbly.

We served ours with rice as a side. Enjoy!

Day 2: Beans, Greens and Cornbread

My inspiration came from this recipe, although honestly, it didn’t taste particularly “mexicany” to me.

Have I mentioned how much we love our slow cooker? We used to do “Slow Cooker Sundays” all

the time before moving. We are slowly getting back into the groove. I have found it is absolutely amazing for cooking a big old pot of beans all day long. I do love the simplicity of a bowl of beans. This also worked out well because we had one of my classmate friends, L, and her fellow, D, over for dinner since we had been chatting about getting together before we went our separate ways for the break. They had been packing all day as they are moving to a new place, so it was nice to treat them to a hot meal. We all know how tiring packing can be!

Note: A lot of our spices comes from Penzey’s. I guess this is a bit of a free plug for them. LOVE them. In many cases, they will be the same price or cheaper than what you can get at your local grocery, especially if you buy the bigger bulk bags.

Crockpot Bean Soup

1 lb of dried pintos (no need to soak!) Just rinse and look for rocks and junk that shouldn’t be there.

1 chopped onion

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

Seasonings: 1 ½ tbsp of cumin, Adobo seasoning, Chicago Steak Seasoning, Smoked Spanish Paprika, 2 spoonfuls of brown sugar, Trinidad Seasoning. All of this was to taste throughout the cooking process.

Fill the cooker about 2/3 of the way with water and cook on low for at least 8 hours. I added some more water along the way to keep the beans barely covered so they would not get dry and crusty.

Greens

This was an attempt to use up random bags of mystery greens we had received from the CSA. I used half a bag of something of which I had no clue what it is, but knew it had tasted good last week! The other bag was little baby kale. This was pretty simple. I pulled all the stems off (hate stems), and gave it a good rinse. Threw it in a big skillet with a drizzle of olive oil and 2 Tbps of butter. For spices, I used an Herbed Season Salt, Trinidad seasoning, red pepper flakes, and some ground pepper. After they wilted down, I drizzled them with some red wine vinegar. That’s it, people! You wanna know what else? Greens are kinda starting to grow on me, especially when I season them the way I like it. I think that is the key: Use seasonings you like to accent the flavor of the greens.

Cornbread

As I mentioned, this was an effort to get rid of stuff in our refrigerator. Well, we were out of eggs, so I went in quest of an eggless cornbread recipe on the internet. This is the one I picked, and I followed it as is (Well, we were out of wheat pastry flour, so I used a mix of all purpose and wheat flour). It got pretty good reviews from all of us, and I would make it again. I typically rely on good old Jiffy mix, but as I threw together this one bowl wonder, I realized how EASY it is to make cornbread from scratch. Why on earth I have not figured that out before now… who knows?

Day 3: Couscous Salad with Butternut Squash and Sauteed Radishes and Peas

Again, we were trying to work our way through as many vegetables as possible before travelling, so that was the primary goal with this menu. The added bonus is that both recipes called for citrus and we have gotten a ton of oranges through the CSA. I had been eyeing this salad for a while after reading about it on two different blogs. I found it pretty yummy, but I think I would cut it in half next time. The leftovers were okay but not great, and actually, we left some behind that we just could not get through before travelling. I went light on the cinnamon because R is not a big fan of it in savory dishes and I subbed allspice for nutmeg as we didn’t have any. I also added more oil to the dressing as I thought the proportions were a little high on the acidic side. The radish dish was an experiment. I have always been curious about what cooked radishes would be like. I did make a few minor changes from the original recipe. I used frozen peas instead of sugar snaps. We are not fans of dill, so I subbed dried tarragon. Overall, it wasn’t bad and not nearly as weird as you might think it could be. It mellowed out the sharpness of the radishes but left the crunch. I don’t think I would make it regularly, but it is an unusual way to fix radishes if you are looking for something different. It also looks really pretty. I wasn’t crazy with how it reheated, so I would only make enough for one meal or make sure you are fixing it for more than two people.

Here is the link to the Couscous Salad with Butternut Squash

Here is the link to the Sauteed Radishes with Peas

Hearty Winter Salad

Okay, I am taking a super quick study break to make a quick blog post because this salad was THAT good. Stay tuned for a Tale of Flagstaff Thanksgiving later this week or next week.

Hearty Winter Salad

(Using CSA goodies and pantry odds and ends)

Note: Since this was an on the fly collaboration with Robert cooking and me telling him what to do, the directions are pretty free form. However, if you have any level of comfort in the kitchen, it should be pretty easy to follow.

1 small butternut squash (ours was from the CSA), peeled, seeded, and cubed

· Roast in oven for about an hour at 350 degrees. Turn up 450 degrees and cook for another 10 minutes or so until it starts to get brown and crispy

Take random greens (we used what we got from the CSA). Wash and tear.

· Throw in a skillet on medium high heat along with some garlic and olive oil until wilted. Sprinkle with balsamic vinegar

To build your salad, you will also need nuts (we used toasted pecans), dried fruit (we used cranberries), and cheese (we used goat). Customize to your taste and what you have on hand.

· Put down a layer of the wilted greens

· Add a pile of butternut squash

· Sprinkle with cranberries, nuts, and cheese.

Eat! Delish!

P.S. I could see some caramelized onions being a super yummy addition.

Spaghetti Squash Chronicles

We have received an abundance of spaghetti squash with our CSA so far this fall. It is not so much that we dislike it, but it is more that it gets a bit boring as a side dish on its own and I don’t particularly like it as a substitute for real spaghetti. So, for once in my life, I got a little creative and adventuresome when it comes to cooking on the fly! No recipes… no research…. Just me throwing stuff together that we had in the house that I thought might taste good together. I will also say that this type of casserole gets rid of that weird crunchy texture that spaghetti squash always seems to have. In the spirit of cooking on the fly, you will notice that my recipes are a little “loosey goosey” with regards to amounts. If I can wing it, you can too! Just estimate based on proportions and flavors that you like. Honestly, it is hard to make a mistake with these.

I made the first one as a contribution for a small gathering of friends. My goal was to try and get rid of half a baked squash and not have to go to store for any ingredients. After it turned out so well, I got inspired and came up with idea for the second one. Honestly, I liked the Southwest version best, but I would make the Mediterranean one again, too. If you do try either, you will have to let me know what you think. Enjoy!

Southwest Spaghetti Squash

• Whole or Half a roasted squash, shredded into a bowl
• 1 can of beans (I used pintos)
• Sauteed onion and peppers
• Sauteed chili pepper
• Your favorite Southwest or Mexican seasonings (to taste) plus salt and pepper
• Yogurt, cream, or sour cream ( or a mix). Just enough to give it some creaminess and bind it
• Top with shredded cheese (I used cheddar)

Cover and bake at 350 for at least a half hour to 45 minutes.

Mediterranean Spaghetti Squash (going for the flavors of a spankopita)

• Half or whole roasted spaghetti squash, shredded into bowl
• Caramelized onions
• Spinach (I used arugula to get rid of it)
• 1 can cannellini beans
• Some pine nuts
• Splash of lemon juice
• Herbs de Provence, salt and pepper
• Yogurt and touch of heavy cream, just enough to bind it and give it a creamy texture
• Feta chunks

Mix it all together in a bowl. I lightly folded the feta in last. Bake for about 45 minutes until bubbly. We sprinkled some Parmesan on the top before serving.