Homemade Croutons

Remember my mammoth bread?

We still had half left this morning when I got up.  Half of a mammoth 2 day old bread.

Yum.

Not really.

I cubed it all up and tossed it in my roasting pan.  I then drizzled about 1/4 cup melted butter on it and sprinkled it with garlic powder and a pinch of salt before tossing it all together to coat.

In the oven she went at 350 for 25 minutes.

Crunchy.

Remember my mammoth salad?

Nom.

A perfect way to top your salad.

So easy.  So good.

My next kitchen experiment will be to replicate the cheap bad for me French dressing I enjoy so much.  I’ve found a knock off online this week but have yet to give it a whirl.

What are you cooking?

I’m going to dive back into my salad now.  Eating your veggies never tasted so good.

Mmmm… Fiddleheads

I think my father-in-law felt a little badly for T yesterday when T informed him we wouldn’t be doing our annual fiddlehead picking.  As much as we love the rewards of our hard work, we just don’t have the time.  So, my father-in-law took it upon himself yesterday to pick a 6 gallon pail of the tasty green delicacy for us.  T then helped him clean them.

Now I have the fun job of par-boiling and freezing them.

It’s an easy process, really.  It just takes a little time.

First, I boil them for a minute or 2.  Then I drain them, stick them in an ice bath and then drain them again.

Then I lay them out on a towel to dry for a few hours before I pack them into freezer bags - in meal sized portions.

My counter is currently full of them.

These are about ready to hit the freezer so I get to go start round 2.  I’m hoping to get our cooler half empty before I need to make dinner.  (They’re in cold water in the cooler until I process them all.  Ideally, you want them refrigerated, but we just don’t have the space.  We’ll rinse any left in the cooler tonight and put fresh water until I can deal with the rest tomorrow.)

NOM.

Butternut Squash Lasagna

My obsession with finding new squash recipes this fall started with this:

It created a need in me to find all sorts of new and different squash recipes to try. I stumbled upon this recipe originally in Mother Earth News. I tweaked the original.

What you'll need (the original - my changes are bolded below):
1 tbs olive oil
1 (11⁄2- to 2-pound) butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups whole milk
Pinch of nutmeg
12 no-boil lasagna noodles
2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Saute 1 diced shallot and then add cubed squash, toss to coat and season with salt and pepper.

Pour the water into the skillet, cover and simmer over medium heat until the squash is tender, about 20 minutes.

Transfer the squash to a mixing bowl or food processor and mash. Season the squash purée to taste with more salt and pepper.

Melt the butter in a medium-size saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and whisk for 1 minute. Gradually whisk in 1/2 cup white wine and 3 1/2 cups of milk. Bring to a low boil over medium- high heat. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the sauce thickens slightly, whisking often, about 5 minutes. Add the nutmeg. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Lightly butter a 13-by-9-by-2- inch glass baking dish. Spread 3/4 cup of the sauce over the prepared baking dish. Cover the bottom of pan with one layer of lasagna noodles. Spread half of the squash purée over the noodles. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese. Drizzle 1/2 cup of sauce over the cheese. Repeat layering once more, finishing with a layer of noodles covered only by white sauce.

Tightly cover the baking dish with foil and bake for 40 minutes.

My helpers were trying to get into the cheese while waiting for the next step.  They were not impressed when I moved it out of reach after taking this picture.

Remove cover, sprinkle the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses over the lasagna and continue baking until the sauce bubbles and the top is golden, about 15 minutes longer. Let the lasagna stand for 15 minutes before serving.

Ooey gooey deliciousness.

Ooooohhhh yeaaaah.

So, if you find yourself in the same conundrum I’m in (with lots and lots of squash), I’d suggest giving this a whirl.  I think buttercup could also be substituted for the butternut for just as delicious a meal. 

Enjoy!

I've found a squash I do not like.

I didn't think it was possible.

I'll be the first to admit to being a picky eater. However, motherhood changes things. As well as making me scatter brained and in constant need of a notebook to jot down reminders, it has apparently also affected my taste buds. I don't think I could be considered a picky eater anymore because I'll eat most any food placed in front of me (oink oink).

Obviously, we love summer squash. I'm surprised we didn't turn into gourds when that was all we ate for a month. A few weeks ago, one of T's co-workers gave him a spaghetti squash. He suggested mixing the cooked squash with some actual spaghetti for our first time. Lo and behold, we loved it (especially with our infamous tomato sauce--ha). I'm left wondering why we had never tried it before now! It is going to be a welcome addition to next summer's garden.

Also gifted a butternut squash, we tried it for the first time a few days ago. I cut it open, scooped out the seeds and baked it with some butter and a touch of brown sugar. For starters, I didn't bake it long enough. Dinner was already late that night, so we took our servings from one half, but we put the other half back in the oven for a while. I didn't enjoy it. It reminded me of turnips, and I am not a fan of turnips (even after my new mother taste buds developed). T seemed to be on the fence. And Monkey--my Monkey whom could also be known as Piggy-- she only ate a few bites before turning her attention to the rest of the food on her plate.

So, dear readers, I have an assignment of sorts for you. I want to know how you cook YOUR butternut squash. I still have another one to cook (we were given one after we bought one at a farm stand). Anyone can do an online search, but what I want is your tried and true recipes.

You may make a convert of me yet.

Defeat

I have a disease. It's called "can't put down a book once I've started until it's finished." So yesterday afternoon consisted of an hour of Monkey & I reading books, which means I did not make bread. (The book was nothing to suggest. An adventure romance novel to just dull my mind for a few hours... haha).

I also did not make apple crisps. T hadn't brought up the dehydrator for me. And to be perfectly honest, yes, I could have gone downstairs to get it myself... but there was absolutely no space on my counters for me to put it anyways.

I found a huge bunch of "overripe" bananas for 29 cents a pound I snatched those right up to try making banana chips. I say "overripe" because they were really just past their prime and not anywhere near ripened enough to turn into bread. The dehydrator will be put to use tonight after work or first thing tomorrow morning. I'll be extremely upset with myself if it doesn't.

I processed all of the tomatoes we had in the house already. But T & Monkey went to pick more last night and my counter is once again full of tomatoes. I did manage to at least get them all clean but I'll need to go pick herbs before I'm ready to make more sauce. I'm going to need to buy more parsley, though. T ran a little experiment with parsley this year. He planted a small section with new seeds and a small section with leftover seeds from last year. So we didn't get much parsley (last years seed didn't grow). Needless to say, I was a little annoyed at his choice of produce to experiment with. Next year, double the basil and parsley and skip the cilantro (I don't cook with cilantro so it was really wasted space in the garden).

I made something different for dinner last night. Remember all that summer squash we had? Well, one produce drawer in our refrigerator is still full of it. So I made a variation to the squash and tomato pasta I posted about a couple weeks ago. I sliced the squash this time. I also added thin slices of sweet italian pepper and chunks of sweet italian sausage. Instead of canned diced tomato, I diced up a HUGE beef steak (why use canned when I've got so many fresh, right?). It was a lot better than my first attempt. T actually raved over dinner. I know I did something right when he actually says something about my cooking.

And on that note, it's time to finish getting ready for work so I can hit the road and start my 11 hour day. Have I mentioned how much I loathe Tuesday?

Tomatoes

We have 27 tomato plants in our little garden.

No joke.

There are 6 different tomato varieties (I thought we had 9 but can't remember the other 3 for the life of me.. will verify with T later). We have your regular beef steak and cherry tomatoes. T wanted to try amish paste because he's heard they are good (they are). And then he went a little crazy.

Again, no joke.

I seriously thought I was going to have to commit him this spring. I have never seen another person get so horny (for lack of a better term) over tomatoes! I honestly didn't know what to make of it.

So we ended up with a red zebra, golden girl and yellow pear as well. He was searching and searching for other seedlings at the nursery (Everlasting Farm) just because the names sounded cool, but we were there just too late in the planting season and they were all gone by then.

Speaking of Everlasting Farm, they were a new find for us this year. We both absolutely loved it. They have a fantastic selection of plants (ornamental and edible). I drooled over the landscaping.

But I digress. I'm talking about tomatoes today!

Today, I finally had the opportunity to make my first batch of tomato sauce for the year. We use a recipe we found in Martha Stewart Magazine last year. We just happened upon it about the time we needed to start preserving our tomatoes. Martha's Simple Tomato Sauce recipe is simply wonderful. It's very easy to make and is extremely delicious. It's suggested in the recipe to add your choice of meats, vegetables or herbs after taking it out of the freezer for use. We decided to add the herbs during the cooking process, while they're fresh. I was very generous with the basil and parsley. I also added a bit of oregano. It is also suggested to run it through a food mill for a smoother sauce. We just use our immersion blender a bit in the finished product and that works just fine for us.

Getting the sauce started

My favorite way to use this sauce is in a veggie lasagna. I saute chopped mushrooms and green peppers before mixing into my sauce and layering my lasagna. We tried it tonight on pizza, too. No more jarred pizza sauce for us (I have no excuse for using jarred, anyways)!

All done! Yummy!!

My next project with the tomatoes is to dehydrate some of them. I'm thinking of dehydrating the golden girls because we weren't overly crazy about the texture of them. I'm also going to dehydrate some of the cherry and yellow pear tomatoes. I've never dehydrated tomatoes, so this will be yet another experiment in our household.

Wish me luck!

Pickles

As with squash, we've had quite a few cucumbers. Cucumber slices, cucumber sandwiches, cucumber cubes with hummus or ranch dip.... we've been enjoying our many cucumbers.

If we don't pickle them, our cucumbers will rot (there are just too many for a family of 3 to devour before they go bad!). So pickle we have done.

My preference is dill pickles. We've tried a few different recipes in the past, but were never crazy about any of them. Last fall, my mom tried a new recipe. When we tried her pickles, we knew we had to have the recipe. They tasted almost exactly like our favorites (Claussen)! She even pickled jalapenos and carrot slices with this one.

Here's the recipe (I can't give proper credit for this one. I don't know where my mom got it):

Dill Pickles

Put 1 pod of garlic and 1/2 tsp. dill seed in the bottom of 6-7 pint jars. Pack cucumber spears into the jars. (Double the garlic and dill and halve the jars if you are using quart jars instead). Adding 1 jalapeno to the bottom of the jars is optional.

Bring to boil 1 quart of water, 1/2 quart of vinegar and 1/2 cup pickling salt. Pour boiling water mixture over cucumbers and seal. Let set for 6 weeks before enjoying.

I have a nifty trick for easy sealing, as well. I'll share below. First, let me share our bread and butter pickles.

We saw Alton Brown making pickles on Food network one night. These need to stay refrigerated so we make less of these. Let's face it. We only have so much room in our fridge!

Ab's B and B's

1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 medium cucumbers, thinly sliced
1 cup water 1 cup cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups sugar Pinch kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1/2 teaspoon pickling spice

Combine onion and cucumber slices in a clean spring-top jar.
Combine the remaining ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 4 full minutes to wake up the flavors of the spices.
Slowly pour the hot pickling liquid over the onion and cucumber slice, completely filling the jar. Allow the pickles to cool to room temperature before topping off with any remaining pickling liquid. Refrigerate.


Easy Canning Technique

A friend of my grandmother told her about this. While she sticks to traditional boiling, I decided to give this a try.

Boil the lids in a small pot of boiling water (it melts the rubber a little and makes it more receptive to sticking to the jar). Wipe down the mouth of each jar. Take the lids out of the water, one by one (kitchen tongs are great for this) or else they'll stick together. Wipe the lid down as well. Cap jars as normal.

Place the jars into a rectangular cake pan. Be sure the jars are not touching one another! Put them in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. I let them cool on the stove before storing my jars in the pantry.

Easy, right? We don't do much canning, but I have done this with spaghetti sauce as well. I find it much easier than boiling my jars.

Get out there and make some pickles!

Squash has overrun our home!

This being only the 2ND year we have a garden (and it's been expanded on from last year, even), we're still learning how much we need to plant to provide for our family. T has taken on the garden - and over did it just a smidgen on the yellow squash (by just a smidgen, I mean we're buried in gourds).

Yellow squash from our 2008 garden

Normally, we just slice and grill. I've tried a bunch of different recipes to change it up a bit (I'll share below). But today, I'm trying something new. Freezing.

First I hand washed the garden filth off my veggies. I dried them with a hand towel and placed them in my colander until I was ready for them.

I then seeded and chopped them into small, bite sized pieces.

I placed the pieces on parchment lined baking sheets and put them in the freezer.

I'll leave them in the freezer for a few hours to make sure they're frozen through. Then I'll transfer them to freezer bags. I've opted not to blanch them in hopes of keeping the mush at bay (or at least to a minimum). We'll see later this winter how this experiment goes.

Now for the good stuff. Recipes. These were all a success in our house (I wouldn't suggest them if we didn't like them).

The first one is something a friend suggested. I tweaked her suggestion and flew with it. I don't have any measurements (as I was flying by the seat of my pants - not something I do often when cooking. I'm a recipe follower....)

Squash Tomato Pasta

I started off with a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil in my saute pan. I put in a couple chopped cloves of garlic and a thinly sliced onion. Then I added my squash chunks and cooked them through. I added a splash of Shiraz (red wine), a can of diced tomatoes and a handful of chopped fresh basil. After letting it simmer a few minutes, I mixed in a generous amount of grated Parmesan cheese. We tossed it with cooked linguine.

The following 2 recipes I got out of Parents Magazine (August 2008 issue). You'll find the article and more fresh produce recipes by clicking on the link.

Squash Nuggets

"Dip sliced squash into Italian dressing then in a mixture of seasoned bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese. Arrange on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 450 degrees F for 10 minutes, or until browned."

Yellow Submarines

Parents version:
"Saute 1/2 cup chopped peppers in hot oil for 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in 2 tablespoons parsley, salt and pepper to taste, 1/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese, and 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Fill four hollow yellow squash halves. Sprinkle with more Jack cheese; bake at 350 degrees F for 15 minutes."

My kicked up version (the Parents version just wasn't stuffed enough for us!):
Chop: 1 red pepper, 1 green pepper, 3-4 celery stalks, a small onion and a couple of big mushrooms; saute in hot oil until veggies are tender. Stir in chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste, a handful of shredded Monterey Jack and a tablespoon of Parmesan. Fill four hollow squash halves and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Just a little variety from plain old grilled squash slices!