Delicata Squash… Oh My.

Can you stand to read one more time while I wax rhapsodic about the buying club? This week, we had some beautiful squash, delicata squash.  I’d never heard of it before, but they were so pretty!

Hello Gorgeous, right?

As always, Annie sends out a newsletter that has the items that we expect this week, as well as ideas for how to use some of the more interesting and unusual items.  It directed me to a website that had a recipe for the squash and kale that really piqued my interest.  Apparently she got the idea here and switched it up to suit her needs.  I, as always, did the same.

Here’s mine:
Pre-heat oven to 350.  Split and remove the seeds from the squash.

Spray with some olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper and roast for 45 minutes-1hour, or until they’re fork tender (next time I think I’ll roast them even longer, letting the skin darken a bit).

In the meantime… prepare the rest of the ingredients
4 cloves of garlic minced
2 bunches of kale, washed and chopped
2 T. Olive Oil
2 cans garbanzo beans drained and rinsed
salt, pepper and a big pinch of dried sage
Big handful of bread crumbs (I guess about a half to 3/4 cup)
1/2 c. parmesan cheese

15 minutes before you’re going to take the squash out, heat a large pan on med/high heat.  Add olive oil.  When it ribbons, add the garlic and saute, just till you can smell it.  Add the greens and saute.

Stir and shake and saute until it cooks down and is nice and shiny from the oil, add the chickpeas, salt, pepper and sage (always make sure to crush dried herbs a little bit with your hands to release any oil that’s left in them.  I don’t know if this really works for the taste, but it sure smells good!)

Remove from the heat and add the bread crumbs and the cheese (keeping a little aside for topping).

If they’re not already out, take the squash out of the oven.  (if they’re not done just let the greens sit, they’ll be fine).

Spoon greens into squash halves and sprinkle with remaining cheese.  Put back into the oven and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

These were so good.  The squash is more along the lines of winter squash then summer squash, but lighter tasting. Sweet and creamy, combined with the bitterness of the greens and the meaty garbanzo beans… Oh my.  It’s meals like this that make me think I might actually be able to trick convince my husband to eat more vegetarian meals.  This was our dinner.  I ate the one that you’re looking at and it was extremely satisfying.

First Day Back

I didn’t mean to take the entire summer off, really I didn’t.  What was meant to be a brief hiatus, a couple of weeks at the most, turned into the entire summer.  Then that move took a lot out of us and before I knew it, here we were at the start of our school year!  The kids are sighing and tutting over their assignments and it’s my job to motivate them and keep them on track, but the truth is that I just want to go lay by the pool!

It’s already noon and Travis is halfway through his math assignment (it’s only 16 problems) and Haley is redoing her history assignment because she apparently didn’t actually read it the first time. We’re starting with two virtual classes and I, as a parent, would like my children to make a good impression the first week and not have to worry about being the problem family… (there’s time enough for that later!) but we are not off to a terrific start!

I know that it’s just transition pains, we’ve been through it before, but it certainly makes the case for year round schooling.  At least in my mind it does. I think I just might call an emergency PE class and get into that pool anyway.

Escarole and Tomato Pasta

I have a fridge full of beautiful, organic produce and I’m picking more up on Monday, so I’m sort of forced into getting a little more creative, stepping out of my comfort zone in an effort to utilize all this beautiful food I’m lucky enough to have access to.

I  had never prepared escarole before, so I was a little nervous.  I remembered eating it at a friend’s house when I was a teenager and was pretty sure that I could duplicate that dish.  Here’s what I did:

1 bunch escarole washed and roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic chopped
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1/3-1/2 c. bread crumbs (I really didn’t measure – it doesn’t matter)

Put a big pot of water up to boil, add salt when it reaches a boil.  Drop the escarole in and allow to cook for a minute or two.  We just want it slightly cooked and bright green.  Drain and allow to rest in the colander.

In a heated, shallow pan, pour the olive oil and when it “ribbons” add the garlic and saute for a minute or so, add the bread crumbs and cook, stirring continuously until it crisps a bit.  The bread will soak up all the oil, you don’t have to add more.  Add the escarole and saute to coat and combine.  Remove from heat.

This was so delicious and I was tempted to eat it right then and there, but this was about making meals for the week so I let it cool and then put it in a tightly sealed container and put it in the refrigerator.

Today I decided we had to eat it, so I looked through the rest of the produce for what I could add to it and found the magnificent, heirloom, cherry tomatoes… and decided that escarole and tomatoes would be just wonderful with some penne rigate.

I put up a pot of salted water to boil and washed and halved the tomatoes.  I cooked two pounds of the penne rigate, drained them into the colandar, put that pot right back on the burner and added a couple of tablespoons of Olive Oil and the tomatoes.

I let them cook for a couple of minutes, just till they started to soften and release their juices.  Then I added the escarole mixture from yesterday.

Cooked it until completely heated and then added the pasta back in and tossed to combine and coat the pasta.  It seemed a little bit dry so I added a couple of splashes of vegetable broth.  Served it with a little parmesan cheese, salt and pepper and we all made grunting noises instead of having a normal family conversation around the dinner table.

Easily feeds six.

You could also use just 1lb. of pasta and have a more vegetable heavy dinner, which is what I would do next time, but this fed the whole family and had plenty for Jim’s lunch at work tomorrow.

I Enjoyed this Far too Much!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…… Ok, last month at the house I used to live in.  I read a post written by a woman who had too many business cards that she didn’t use up at BlogHer and lamented about what to do with them.  She had an idea to mail them out to some very clever bloggers and have them do funny things with them.  Somehow I was able to worm my way in and before I knew it, I had a couple of her cards.  I packed them away safely so that I could move and then started to panic about what to do with them.

I finally had a great idea.. no I didn’t, I’m such a liar.  It was Jim’s idea, but I needed cover to actually do it.  Today Jim was off and I actually made my poor husband who works like 90 hours a week, come with me to keep watch while I executed my Jim’s evil plan.

I took her cards, and poked a hole in each one, threaded them with pink curly ribbon and an elastic band and… well, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. (As always, click for biggerized)

The manager came over and told us that we couldn’t take pictures of the product, but didn’t notice that we had added the tags.  I don’t know if they’re still on the bottles, but I giggled like a 12 year old all afternoon!

So there you go Aunt Becky!  This was fun.

Bok Choy Accidental Dinner

Look at this beautiful bok choy!  I got three bunches of it in my organic produce share this week.

The plan was to grill it a little to carmelize it, then grill some chicken and toss it with soy sauce, fresh ginger and garlic.

3 bunches bok choy
4 cloves of garlic chopped
1 generous Tablespoon of freshly chopped/grated ginger
Sesame oil
Soy Sauce (I use the low sodium, cause it sounds healthier and really is pretty salty anyway)

I cut the bunches in half, length-wise and put them in a pot of water to soak.  This helps them to revitalize if they wilted a little and also starts to clean them.  After they soaked for a while, I seperated the stalks just a little bit from the base and cleaned in between them.  There’s a lot of dirt in these babies, and it’s a little labor intensive, but oh-so-worth it.

I heated up the large grill pan and started to grill the bok choy in bunches.  Just let them caramelize a little on each side and then remove them to a platter until they’re cool enough to handle.

At this point I went to the refrigerator to get the chicken breasts.  I looked on the bottom shelf and there were thighs and a flank steak, but no breasts.  Ummmmm.  I opened the freezer and there they were.  Frozen solid.

Oops.

At this point I didn’t have time to do anything with the thighs and the steak is for a different meal entirely, so I opened the pantry only to realize that I had no rice, and the only pasta I had was rigatoni, which I felt was too heavy for the bok choy…. What to do, what to do.

Then I remembered that Travis had begged us for a case of noodles the day before… Ramen noodles.  (I know! Ew!) I threw caution to the wind and quickly put up a pot of water and grabbed three packages of the noodles.  I threw out the nasty MSG packets and boiled the three bags.

I took out the wok and while it heated, I rough chopped the bok choy.  When the pan was hot I poured about 2 T. of sesame oil and addded the garlic and ginger and sauteed it for about a minute.  I threw all the bok choy in and added soy sauce; just enough so that there was some liquid as I stirfried (is that a verb?)

I drained the noodles and shook as much of the water out of the colander as possible and then just dumped them into the wok.  I added some more soy sauce so that everything had some soy sauce on it and plated.

I drizzled just a little bit of sesame oil over the top and then burned the hell out of my mouth cause I couldn’t wait to try it.

The crunchy stalks, combined with a slightly bitter leaf alongside the sweet caramelized parts and the ginger, garlic and salty soy sauce made this one a real winner.

Ramen noodles… Whoda thunk?

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