Foto Friday: more cookies, less ranting. 20 November 2009 12:08 pm
Posted by Tracy in : baking,books,cookies,dessert,food as spectator sport,food snobbery,fun,winter squash , 1 comment so farSo yesterday I thought about going out to do some responsible stuff before my 7 PM yoga class, but decided that I would be happier staying at home to restock our supply of delicious instant food. End result bragged to Facebook and Twitter last night:
Final score for Afternoon O’Domesticity: 1 big pot dal, 1 batch punkin spice cookies, 1 pan cornbread, and many dishes done… priceless.
The dal was an extra-spicy version of the recipe I made up out of Nepal nostalgia, and the cornbread and pumpkin cookies are both from my beloved Moosewood New Classics. It’s actually my second batch of these cookies in a week; the first was last Friday, when I decided it was time to use up the leftover canned pumpkin from our Halloween winter squash-stravaganza — only then of course I ended up opening another can of pumpkin, so I was still left with a partial can in the fridge, like when I started, only with more delicious, delicious cookies. Check them out! (more…)
Monkey Monday: winter squash goodness and more. 2 November 2009 9:47 am
Posted by Tracy in : books,cooking,eating,fangirl,Harold McGee,health at every size,kitchen mishaps,monkeys,nyc,reading,seasonality,winter squash , 2 commentsFun fact! In some dialects of English (but not mine), the word “pumpkin” is used to refer to all winter squash, not just the orange hard-skinned kinds used to make pies and jack-o-lanterns (and other tasty things, some of which I will be describing later in this post). In my experience, this is mostly a Southern Hemisphere/British usage, but I welcome a more substantial analysis than my touchy-feely “I think this is how it works.” Meanwhile, in this Northern Hemisphere, between Halloween and the end of Daylight Savings Time it’s officially winter in my brain, and for the past week or so I have been marking the changing season by eating lots of winter squash, including pumpkin. Yum.
For starters, (more…)
Winter Squash 103: toasting the seeds. 28 February 2008 12:22 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,eating,ingredients,pictures,seasonality,vegan,vegetarian,winter squash , add a commentFebruary is never my favorite time of year, but it’s especially rough in Oregon, where most of the winter looks like the very worst kind of February weather to me — not super-cold, just grey and dark and rainy. There’s usually a nice week in the middle of the month, when the sun comes out and I get my hopes up that winter is over and I can go back to playing in my garden. That week is almost invariably followed by at least a month of meteorological misery (sometimes it even snows on my poor little sproutlings). Not so this year. It’s been a remarkably sunny February, and I’m a little suspicious, like Oregon is trying to lure me into a false sense of security so it can destroy me with hail. I’ve been trying to resist overconfidence, but March is almost here…
All of which is to say that if I want to write about winter squash, I had better hurry up and do it while there’s still a hint of the appropriate season. So. (more…)
Winter Squash 102: enough prepping, let’s roast (and eat)! 8 February 2008 6:31 pm
Posted by Tracy in : advice,cooking,eating,ingredients,soup,vegan,vegetarian,winter squash , 6 commentsIn Winter Squash 101, I described the process of cutting a winter squash into bite-size pieces suitable for a recipe like Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew, and even illustrated the process with pictures of my wrangling an acorn squash for similar purposes. But that’s not all you can do with winter squash, oh no, and many of the alternatives are even more fun and easy. Take roasting, for example. (more…)
Winter Squash 101: words and pictures. 8 January 2008 8:19 pm
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,friends,ingredients,pictures,winter squash , 4 commentsThis post is dedicated to Debbie, who asked about prepping winter squash for Gladys’s Rice and Bean Stew.
Winter squash are delicious but labor-intensive, as I attempt to demonstrate in the following photo series. Whenever possible, I highly recommend roasting them in their more or less inedible hard outer skins, the better to scoop out their delicious cooked flesh without any of that pesky peeling beforehand. But sometimes you want chunks of squash, as in the above-mentioned stew, or winter squash risottos, and so on. In that case, you’ve got a little more work ahead of you, and here’s how I do that work. (more…)
