The Autumn Squash Challenge Round #3

OR

Butternut Squash Vegan Mac and Cheese - The First Success

It's ridiculous how quickly time goes by when you're older. Everyone and their grandmother remarks of this at least once in their lifetime - "Back in my day...!" - but it's true that as you grow up days fly by inexplicably faster than they used to. I'm of the belief that it's because we don't mindlessly play anymore; we're overaware of the hours of the day and days of the week and everything we have to do before certain dates. It doesn't help that a good chunk of North Americans have very few, but very commercialized holidays throughout the year. About once a month there's a date we have to plan and buy gifts and make food for, and the stores we buy the supplies from are always two months ahead of us. You want Easter decorations? Start looking on January 2nd. If you're trying to prepare for Thanksgiving, you'd better have that eighteen pound turkey ordered three months ahead of time. Christmas is its own special cup of tea, shoving grinning pumpkins out of the way well before it's reasonable and putting a disrespectful screen in front of November 11th. GF and I actually went to our first Christmas craft show, because we're old ladies like that, just this past Friday (with poppies pinned to our chests, thank you very much). While I understand the jumping of the gun in some respects - craft shows are fun any time of year - it makes us overall more paranoid of time going by.


It was almost a full month ago I decided to learn how to cook squash, and it was with a bit of a shock that I realized I've only made about five attempts since then. Any time now, our craft show reminded me, we'll start getting snow here on the east coast (Manitoba's already had some), and it's a slow decline of fresh gourd availability after then. I've got to get my shit together! Especially now that I've finally gotten a grasp on how to cook pumpkin seeds. That's right, folks, I've finally figured out the trick. Thanks to the tutorial on Oh She Glows, I now know I need to boil - yes, boil - the seeds for ten minutes, then toast them for twenty at 325F. Perfection. Even my mother liked them!

Pumpkin seeds, by the way, not only have magnesium (muscle relaxation), potassium (nerve health), protein (everything) and healthy plant fats (brain and joint strengtheners), but are rich in tryptophan, that amino acid in turkey everyone says puts you to sleep. It is, consequently, beneficial if you suffer insomnia or high levels of stress, and is a precursor of serotonin, the brain's mood-regulating chemical. Folks who have depression often don't make enough serotonin, which is why SSRIs (meds that convince your brain you have more than you do) are so popular for treating it. The added bonus of cooking your own pumpkin seeds is that their hard shell is built of an insoluble fibre, which helps build and move feces along your large intestine. Hear that, everyone? If you're stressed, depressed, or can't sleep or poop, start downing gourd seeds.

My other success, with the actual flesh of a squash, was a batch of vegan mac n' cheese. I've come to the quick realization that I'm not as talented an inventor in the kitchen as I'd like to be, so I've been latching onto recipes and following them to a T, with fantastic results. You'd be surprised at how actual measurements can help make a concoction taste good. This recipe was also from Oh She Glows, although the first time I whipped up a batch I actually used honey mustard instead of dijon, so it was rather sweet. Can't decide which taste I preferred, though. The roasted squash by itself was fantastic, too.

It's a shame I can't claim to have figured out both these recipes by myself, but such is life. Maybe I'll stick to promoting other blogs' food inventions. Appreciate what talents you have and accept those you don't.

In related news, do you realize how many pumpkin seeds you can get out of two cheap jack o' lanterns? Manna from the heavens, I tell you! The world really does provide for us - you just have to know where to look. Now is prime time to start stocking up on homemade pumpkin paste and toasted seeds. Before you know it, the Christmas snowmen will have taken over!

Shortly put,
- Leah

The Autumn Squash Challenge Round #2

OR

Pumpkin Pureé and Popped Amaranth

To be honest, I've never been a huge fan of Halloween, which is funny, because I make costumes as a hobby. But there's a stark difference between coming up with something clever and cheap (Glow stick stick-men! Static cling! Two peas in a pod!) for a one night dance and spending months weeping and freaking out over making a physical outfit to match the often unreasonable proportions and attributes of a cartoon. Anyone who's ever been in the situation of a cosplayer at work or watched one of those "Shit Cosplayers Say" videos is well aware of how out of hand this hobby can get. Budgets are blown, toxic chemicals are inhaled, too-tight wigs are suffered. It's a lot like the kind of stuff models go though, I imagine. There's pain, discomfort, and hunger suffered for beauty - I once went a week before a convention eating nothing but raisin bread with margarine because we were too busy sewing to buy food.

Maybe it's because I'm introverted, or because I've always been bad at making Halloween costumes that were anything other than stereotypical (cat! witch! another cat!), but this end of October holiday just didn't hold much for me after I wasn't allowed to go candy-collecting anymore. My mother, be it out of love or actual lack of money, made the Halloween costumes my sister and I wore every year when we were children, with the patience of a saint and mega creativity. We may not have been as fancy as the other kids in school with their store-bought princess dresses, but I had custom-made butterfly wings that could probably have concussed someone, and my nine-year-old sister was the best sheet of leopard-print roadkill anyone had ever seen. We were proud of our hard work. Halloween has its benefits, therefore: I've gained an obsession-level love for the construction of costumes thanks to Mom, a good bunch of ingenuity genes, and a fondness for stabbing pointy things into an unsuspecting vegetable and lighting it up for display (especially when it's designed to mimic my grotesque plastic surgery eye scar).

Let's just say I had the scariest costume ever,
and Spousal Abuse Barbie got extra candy that year.

Most anyone who's celebrated Halloween has at one point or another carved up a Jack o' Lantern. A dear friend of mine once did up about a hundred of them for around his parents' house, both traditional (triangle eyes, jagged mouth) and non (a light-up Pacman and monster pumpkin eating bleeding apples). The two of us rubbed our hands raw pushing knives through their tough skin, but it was a lot of fun, and I got from it seeds that sprouted like weeds in my garden at home and a couple years' worth of fulfillment for my carving quota. Once I'd moved out on my own and felt the desire to carve again, I'd picked up this particular guy in the above photo, but he only lasted a day after he'd been exposed to the heat of our apartment, and then promptly turned fuzzy and blue, so I now know that I can't cut up pumpkins in this building unless I'm cooking them.

Technically speaking, pumpkins are a type of squash, but for some reason get their own considerations by those people who hate zucchini but love pumpkin pie. Go figure. Maybe I'm a purist, spoiled by the first pumpkin pie I'd ever made and tasted in Orillia (directed by GF's recipe, sent via email), but I refuse to cook with canned pumpkin pureé unless I'm forced to. Making my own is stupid easy and ensures I'm getting a local food - if Nova Scotia's good at growing anything in particular, it's apples and winter veggies. Not only is it kind of soothing to roast a pumpkin, as they make your whole house smell autumn-y, but you also get the seeds from them, which you can roast, although you'll have to find instructions somewhere else, because, as my first Autumn Squash Challenged post indicated, I still haven't mastered how to do it yet.

Because I'm lazy and GF's much better at explaining this, I'm going to let her 2010 self do the explaining for how to roast a pie pumpkin (jack o' lanterns are bigger and need more sugar to taste good). While pumpkin smush is good for making pretty much anything involving the season of fall, you're going to want to not do what I did and mix your pumpkin with cinnamon and oatmeal. Sounds good, looks... not good. Tastes okay.

Erm.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED!:

A large serrated knife (a clean handsaw works too)

And ice cream scoop (or a big spoon; I find the scoop is easier, though)

A large pot

PREPARING THE PUMPKIN!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Step 1: Determine if it's a Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin or a pie pumpkin. Pie pumpkins are the smaller, rounder type of pumpkin. Jack-o-lanterns are the big ones. This is important! Trust me!

Step 2: After determining the kind of pumpkin you've got, wash it under warm running water. DON'T USE SOAP.  Just make sure it's all nice and clean. Maybe hug it a few times too. You're about to get very intimate with this pumpkin, so it's okay. 

Step 3: Cut the pumpkin in half. Use your large knife (or handsaw) and use a sawing motion. A serrated knife is better than a smooth one! They both cut the same, but the smooth knife is more likely to slip and hurt you!

Step 4: SCOOP OUT THE GOOEY INSIDES! You wanna get rid of all that stringy, dangly, slimy stuff! BUT SAVE THE SEEDS! Place them in a bowl of water and rub them between your hands. Then pick out the orange bits (throw that away) and drain off the water. Spread them out on a clean towel or paper towel to dry and they're ready to roast. 

Step 5: After the pumpkin is all scooped out, put it into a oven-able container with a lid. Depending on the oven, baking the pumpkin can take 45 minutes to an hour and a half. After the 30 minute mark, check it every fifteen minutes or so and when it's nice and soft. 

 

Step 6: Once it's soft enough it is easy to scoop out the guts with a table spoon.  Use the spoon to gently lift and scoop the cooked pumpkin out of the skin. It should come off the skin pretty easy if it's cooked enough. Sometimes the skin will lift right off with your fingers! Put the pumpkin into a container or big bowl of some sort. If you find that there's a lot of water coming from the pumpkin, let it sit for like... 20-30 minutes and then drain the water out of the container. Otherwise your gloop will be really runny.

Step 7: IT'S TIME TO PUREE THE PUMPKIN! Hand mixer, blender, food processor... What you have there to do it with... PUREE THAT PUMPKIN!

Pureéd pumpkin, as any baker knows, is good for everything this time of year, from pie to muffins to probably spice lattés (but who knows what goes in those). I've got some leftover from the atrocious pumpkin oatmeal I'd made, and it'll probably be turned into some sort of sweet, as they're more reliable and satisfying. I made killer chocolate chip pumpkin muffins last year. Let's aim for that.

In related news, whilst reading Gluten-Free Girl and debating what to do with my pureé, I suddenly decided to make popped amaranth. Anyone up on their health craze reading will recognize amaranth as an ancient grain that comes from an ornamental flower, rich in lysene, an amino acid that's harder to find in plant than animal food. Amaranth seed basically looks like tiny yellow-y styrofoam balls - the ones that pepper your carpet when you break a big piece of foam from the box your microwave came in. It's got a kind of nutty taste, is rather cheap, and can be puffed up like popcorn. 

Let me try to explain how much fun popping amaranth is using a video (which I swear was HD before I uploaded it).

I'd been rather intimidated to try popping this little grain. I'd heard from multiple sources that it was super easy to do, but any recipe that entails "heating a skillet on high" usually has me balking and GF running from the room. But I was apparently having the sort of day where anything is possible if you don't think about it too much, and so before I'd realized what was going on I was throwing seeds in a pan with a spoon and listening to the sizzle of oil-less cooking. The sound popping amaranth makes is rather soothing, to be honest, like a gentle rain. It's also a lot of fun, and way less hard than I'd imagined. Basically, you put a little frying pan on high heat, toss in a couple spoonfuls of amaranth at a time, let them pop and stir until they're all turning a chocolate colour, then throw them in a bowl. You can use it to make homemade granola bars (like I did; just toss a bunch of grains and nuts into a pan with some sticky coating, like honey or molasses), as cereal, or probably to make cookies or something. In any case, it's an adorable food and I'll be finding more ways to include it in my diet.

Popped on the left, raw on the right.

So basically,

1) No recipe for anything especially different today, but now you know how to make your own pumpkin pureé. If I ever get around to making muffins I'll put up instructions.

2) Popped amaranth is super fun and meditative. Plus it's good for you.

Inconclusive and unhelpfully,

- Leah

The Autumn Squash Challenge Round #1

OR

Stripey Sweet Potato (Delicata) Squash

Source

When I set the book down, closed its back cover (after desperately checking the index pages for more), and resigned myself to its finish, I had to pause a moment to bask in the glow of a good read. I felt girlish and giddy, pink-cheeked and wanting to squeal to my empty apartment, "How romantic!" in tones usually reserved for fluffy animals and babies. I was thrilled and inspired, ready to jump up and start cooking, or grab GF and swing her around in those iconic ways Disney heroes do their princesses. (Unfortunately for me, she was at school.) Shauna James Ahern had written - in a way, I felt, for me, even though I have no food allergies - an entertaining, mouth-watering, touch-your-heart-like-no-chick-flick-could novel entitled Gluten-Free Girl, after her blog. In poetic iterations of her five senses, the author made carrot sound exotic and mushrooms as rich and delightful as candy. I felt warm and comforted while she described her friends at dinner, and I salivated at the mention of tastes that made her moan. I craved meals that made me writhe in delight as so many of hers did. 

Every once in a while I'll decide my life's purpose is to cook. I'll head to the kitchen and start whipping out pasta and vegetables, dousing pans in oil and spices and licking my lips in anticipation for my masterpiece. Folks using everything from artisan stone pits to Easy Bake Ovens for their bread can (and do) laugh at my dismal baking skills, but the cooks of the world will soon realize they're outmatched. I'll be the Iron Chef! I'll throw anything in a pan and make it a meal! GF will start asking me to make supper!

Oh, dreams. How quickly they crumble. Especially the unrealistic ones. I understand the ideas behind cooking, sure: take food, make it yummy. But the process of getting Jimmy the broccoli stalk from point A to point B eludes every neuron of my brain (population 500*), and poor Jimmy ends up in a severe identity crisis somewhere at point A-and-three-quarters. ("Am I a floret or a stem? Sauteéd or fried? Green or black?") GF's palate is too refined for my culinary mistakes, but my meals are okay enough for me to eat. They're just not... good.

Enter the Seaport Farmer's Market. It's a brand new building a couple blocks from here with windmills on the roof and extra large windows to give visitors a panoramic view of our mutilating harbour water and island full of snakes. Stalls filled with artists selling crafts and farmers with food crowd the walls, wares elevated on wooden stands. Endless lines of tourists stand right in the way of where everyone's trying to walk. There're usually fiddlers. It's very Nova Scotian. On the Saturday after payday I'd made my way down, hauling a little red wheelie cart, to get myself some groceries. I'd made a list and had more success than usual; scored inexpensive free-range eggs, a giant head of kale (which I've only just finished, two weeks later), local coloured peppers, and my favourite rainbow carrots. Much to my delight, most of the stalls had some form of pumpkin or gourd lining their shelves, too.

Being as I've got a cold constitution, I can't say I'm not partial to summer weather. I can broil myself in the hot sun for hours, then cool down in five minutes and suffer nothing more than a tan. But there's something about autumn weather that everybody and their mother adores. Be it the Pumpkin Spice Lattés at their favourite coffee shop, the colours of the dying leaves, or the thick-knit sweaters, there's something about this season that calls everyone together for cuddles and complaints about cold mornings. I love everything about the fall season. The air is wet and smells of rotting leaves. The ground is prime real estate for people who love crunching things underfoot. Every bite of food you're offered tastes of cinnamon and nutmeg.

As may be obvious by now, I love food. I especially love heavy, warm, squishy food. If it tastes like a walk in the woods, a pot on a fire, and a dollop of maple syrup, I am there. Before I'd realized what I was doing this Saturday at the market, my little red cart was heavy with squash. I'd grabbed two armfuls of the strange globes, admiring their colours and textures and reading their cooking directions curiously. I forked over six or so dollars for four medium-sized gourds, and decided in that moment that I would become a Squash Iron Chef. Food in general may not be my forté, but I am determined learn how to make delicious, squishy, autumn meals if it kills me. There are so many bajillions of variations of fall veggies, and more of the squash family. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to learn to make cheap, filling food out of at least one of these buggers. It helps that GF doesn't generally bother with pumpkins and their cousins, so she can't backseat cook.

I come home with a pumpkin and one each of a sweet potato, spaghetti, and butternut squash. Since I'd tried recipes before of the other three, the sweet potato squash was my go-to for trial #1. 

The instructions said just to bake the little stripey guy, so that's what I did. Forty minutes in a casserole dish at three-hundred and something degrees. The only problem was, after it was cooked, I had no idea what to do with it. Such is the conundrum of being a... well, I wouldn't say gourmet, but a food-collector. I cannot resist buying spices on sale or discount vegetables. I've got lots of tastes to work with, but no idea how to use them. So I mixed the squash with lentils and put curry maple pepper (from Sugar Moon Farm) on top. That sounds decent, right?

  

...ta daa? I'd give round one a 2/10. It was edible, for sure, and I guess not bad, but... not good, either. Clearly this is a squash I'll have to revisit a couple of times to really get a good recipe out of. As I understand, delicata squash come in many different sizes and are generally used as ornaments; this guy just fit in the palm of my hand, so I had no leftover meat to work with.

Host Mom and Dad roasting seeds.

Also, I'd tried roasting the seeds. During the Halloween of 2010 my Orillia host family made the most delicious fresh-roasted pumpkin seeds from the Jack o' Lanterns I and their two girls had carved. I really wish I'd paid attention when Host Dad was cooking them, because I can't for the life of me remember the heat setting or amount of time he'd had them in there. We'd nibbled on those throughout the night, and then after Trick or Treating ate tea, fruit, and hot homemade soup while the girls gagged at the ingredient lists of their chocolate bars and chip bags - a far cry from the way my sister and I used to finish our night of costuming.

My attempt at roasting the squash seeds went much the same way as the squash itself. Maybe it's because I had less that a quarter cup of seeds, or had the oven too high, but in any case, four minutes was too long, and although they looked and smelled nice, the seeds were just too far gone to be pleasant to eat. Very chewy and hard to swallow.

Lessons learned:

1) Find a recipe to follow besides what's printed on the squash itself.

2) Cook more seeds at a lower temperature.

Ding, ding!

- Leah

(P.S: I'm sorry this post is a couple days late. I was ill and working on school project over the weekend.)

*This is a joke. The human brain has an estimated 100 million neurons or more.