Squash Week 2: Chickpea Tahini Salad

I followed some advice and made this:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/01/warm-butternut-squash-and-chickpea-salad/

I mostly followed the recipe - I did use allspice, cider vingear instead of lemon juice, parsley and garlic added at the end. I have this huge tub of Tahini so that was pretty exciting.

I would say that my red onion was store-bought, and very pungent - I wish I would've had some farm share onion to use instead.

Two notes:

* I like the texture of squash better when it's roasted - it isn't just mush. this is probably related to the next note...

* In addition to peeling the outside of the squash, before cutting it up I peeled the inside, where I'd removed the seeds. I hate the stringiness of squash, and I think just knowing that I peeled that stringy part out makes my Chickpea Tahini Salad more delicious.

I would make this again. And, since I am up to my elbows in squash, I probably will.

Farm Share Week 3: The To-Be-Cooked List

As I write this I am eating a salad of spinach and carrots from my farm share and tomatoes, red beans, croutons, and red onion from other various sources. (Would be more delicious but I ran out of Goddess Dressing.) I still haven't finished everything I got in my first farm share week, and I'm getting Week 3's tomorrow, so I have a lot of eating to do. Also at work I have some leftover cabbage & apples I made, and the delicious butternut squash/chickpea salad I made yesterday (which I'll hopefully blog about later.)

So I need to take a moment this lunch hour to figure out what I will be doing with Week 3 Farm Share.

The first rule of the week is NO OUTSIDE EATING. Meaning, everything I eat this week has to be made by myself.

I would like to also only eat things that I already have (no grocery shopping) but that will be trickier.

In my farm share this week I will be getting:

* MORE apples (My house currently looks like an apple farm, and I've already cooked all of mine into a pie... but now there will be more.)

* Festival Squash

* Green Cabbage

* White Button Mushrooms

* Beets

I also currently have, in my possession, to-be-used:

* about half a red onion

* half a lemon

* cherry tomatoes

* potatoes (Week 2)

* carrots (Week 1)

* lots of kidney beans

* a loaf of multi-grain bread

* a bit of parsley

I'm also getting eggs, gouda, and GF cake/cookie flour as elected "extras" in my farm share.

I'm done eating my delicious salad and need to get back to work so I should write down my cooking intentions:

1. borscht! using my sister's Russian friend's recipe (and kidney beans!!) will get me through some beets and cabbage (and carrots) - i will either have to buy an onion or it will be low on onion, which i don't think is so ridiculously bad... i'll just use more garlic.

http://tortinafavola.blogspot.com/2010/08/recipes.html

2. baby quiche - i hate eggs but they make a fantastic breakfast - this version gets doused in hot sauce. will use mushrooms and potatoes, and flavor with garlic and gouda. and leave room for hot sauce.

3. SQUASH... I look forward to Squash: Week 3 - i'm imagining the possibilities...

4. (? - i don't have salad to put it on) goddess dressing - while i have lemon juice and parsley. i've never attempted to replicate the recipe but i read a blog or three about it today.

4. russian cabbage and tomatoes, a bittman recipe i stumbled across. it has caraway seed so it has to be good.

5. beets glazed in orange - i shouldn't have bought so many beets. i just didn't know when i'd be getting more... and i think i'm getting more week 4, but(!) i love beets!

for now, i'm ignoring the apples. maybe they will disappear magically. or i can just take them to work and keep feeding them to my co-workers. and if i ignore the apples, than i have plans for SO MUCH of my farm share that i might actually get back on track and be able to once in awhile "splurge" on a purchased lunch because i don't have enough food to keep myself going... ok, well, a girl can dream

grocery list:

can of tomato paste (borscht)

can of diced tomatoes (cabbage)

oranges (for the other beets)

dill if it's cheap or maybe another herb but i already have parsley (borscht)

an onion? (borscht?)

sour cream ! borscht

gluten-free soy-free vegan carrot cake cupcakes

i modified a recipe, i guessed at lots of ingredient choices - and even the amount of liquid i used generally, but this is kind of what I think I made:

1 c grated carrots

3/4 c bob's gluten-free flour

1/4 t baking powder

3/4 t baking soda

1/4 t salt

1/4-1/3 c currants

1/4-1/3 c almonds

2/3 c sugar

2 T ground flax seed stirred into about 1/3 c of water

1/3 of vegetable oil

baked at 350 for about 25 minutes.

i'd never baked GF before (my new roommate is GF) and I must say these were more delicious than I expected - I think I used too much sugar, and they developed a nice sugary crust at the top. Yum.

breakfast

I think that eggs are gross. Where they come from? Gross. Plus, they taste horrible.

Unfortunately, my body disagrees with me. My body loves eggs! I rarely eat breakfast but when I do, eggs are the breakfast my body responds best to - I feel full, I feel centered - it's great.

A year ago, in preparation for a 12-14 hour day work schedule that would last a couple of weeks (with shorter Sundays) I made myself some baby quiches in a muffin tin that were delightful. I mean, even with delicious cheese (I think I used gruyere) and delicious vegetables (broccoli? or asparagus?) they still needed oodles of hot sauce for me to enjoy them because they had that egg taste, but they got me through some very long hard mornings.

In any case, a few months later I was looking for the recipe and I could not find it anywhere. I wanted to adjust it a bit, see if I could go egg white only, etc. I tried checking my internet history and I looked through . Then yesterday I found a handprinted recipe in my office at work, on the backside of a piece of paper I'd written a playlist on while doodling my senior year of college (it was 4/1/03). I've included both in this post.

RECIPE:

1 bunch asparagus

1/2 T oil

8 eggs

1 c frozen peas

1/4 c flour

2 T fresh mint

1/2 c cheese

1 t salt, pepper

cooking spray

there is no description, just a grocery list.

the playlist:

April first (spring!!!)

neutral

mr. e

crows

last summer

U2 beauti

brad & suzy (or la)

island

say it ain't so

rilo - frug

america - bree sharp

brenda ... ?? mp3 sunray?

free to go folk implosion

this ain't livin - (g.

cold beverage!!

brass monkey - beastie

girls. beastie

rufus - april fools

circles - soul

aimee mann -

ani - little plastic castles

m doughty - never gonna

ben lee - cigarettes will kill you

Fall Farm Share = Squash

I just sent my sister an e-mail telling her about all the things I made/am making/ am thiniking of making with my new farm share (fall farm shares are tricky, i think, but worth it) and I know what her response is going to be - "Alisa, instead of e-mailing me this, you should be blogging about it." And so I'm beating her to the punch.

When you order a fall farm share, you know that you will be getting squash every week. So I really, I brought this upon myself.... but still I will now say it... I hate squash.

Last week I got an Acorn. I already had a huge Acorn squash that had been taunting me for weeks, so I peeled them both and cut them up. I cooked a red onion in some olive oil and then added the squash and a TON of curry powder (to mask the squash flavor) and added some water and a can of coconut milk and I must say, this soup is pretty delicious. When the squash was cooked i blended a bit with my hand blender but then i realized that wasn't good enough so blended the whole thing in small batches.

And I confess... it was delicious. I can even make squash tasty.

Now on to the Butternut I got this week... crap, I hate squash. But if I get creative in my spices, I think I can make this the Fall of Squash Soups.

more pasta?

i don't remember when i looked at heidi's golden tomato sauce recipe, which she posted a few days ago, but i do remember my reaction - that looks good, but i'm not gonna go buy yellow tomatoes.

then i got to work, and discovered a box of golden cherry tomatoes. if i hadn't've looked at that recipe, i would've just snacked on them all day. but i saved them, thinking i'd make the sauce when i got home. that was monday. it's wednesday. i think on monday i had to make broccoli cheddar soup because i was supposed to make it sunday but my mom is way too active so we had to leave the house instead spending the day in the kitchen (my ideal sunday). and then last night i helped my new roommate move in and just didn't feel like cooking. (instead i had cheese and crackers and an artichoke for dinner. i hate artichokes but i'm trying to make myself like them. last night's was pretty good.)

anyway i made the sauce tonight. i followed the recipe exactly, using some delicious garlic my mom bought at the farmer's market in my home town, that was grown by the crazy garlic farmers who only grow garlic. crazy. it's SO GOOD.

i bought a basil plant at the grocery store last night and i've got some expensive parmiagiana reggiano, but i probably won't even use it because the sauce is so good on its own. four ingredients, and perfection.

oh, by the way - it took me awhile to figure out who left the tomatoes on my desk, but it was my boss, who doesn't like cherry tomatoes but they were in his farm share. which just made me jealous because i didn't get a farm share this year. next year! for sure.

pictures coming.

my camera sucks

so i got a new blackberry after my old one became a public health risk. but this one doesn't have a flash on the camera and takes shittier pictures.

however, i was in the mountains, and they're still pretty.

i guess i'll just have to stop cooking when it's dark outside.