Winter Squash 103: toasting the seeds. 28 February 2008 12:22 pm
Posted by Tracy in : pictures, ingredients, winter squash, seasonality, vegan, eating, vegetarian, cooking , 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, ingredients, winter squash, vegan, soup, eating, vegetarian, cooking , 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 : winter squash, ingredients, pictures, friends, cooking , 5 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…)
