How To’sday: How to Peel & Cut Up a Butternut Squash

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Squash!

Butternut Squash is a rather new ingredient in my culinary arsenal. Having really discovered its magic last fall when I cooked up a giant bath of Butternut Squash Soup, I’ve since been quite fascinated it. Harvested in mid- to late-fall, these squash can store unrefrigerated for months, which makes them an ideal winter staple.

What we start with

I’ve seen this squash for sale in the produce section, pre-peeled and cubed. Like most pre-cut fruits and vegetables, it is wildly more expensive to buy it that way than to buy the squash whole. Plus, it requires refrigeration and will quickly go bad if not used. But it doesn’t take long to go from a whole squash to a beautiful mound of orange cubes ready for cooking, and without much special equipment. You can totally do this.

Here’s how it’s done:

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Leftover-Rice Cakes

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Breakfast of leftovers
I don’t really recall eating much rice before I was thirteen. It was then that I had my first delicious bites of Chinese takeout (strangely, in Disneyworld). My sister and I were hooked, so suddenly, stir fry became a regular meal in our household. My dad would bust out a giant wok, a pound of chicken breast, and a smattering of stir fry vegetables, and within minutes the house would fill with the sounds and smells of the quickly cooking meal.

Rice, too, was always part of these week-night stir fries. And it was the rice that yielded the best leftovers, because the following morning, dad would make rice cakes.

Tasty breakfast of rice

Rice cakes, as I grew up with them, are not comparable to the puffy, crunchy discs of rice you can buy at the store. These rice cakes are rather more like pancakes, cooked in a frying pan and slathered with butter and maple syrup to make a scrumptious breakfast.

Whether you make your rice for stir fry, curry, or something like this, make a little extra and you can set yourself up for a week’s worth of awesome breakfasts.

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Almond Chicken

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Pan of dinner
Frequently, when I go to my parents’ house, the organizing spirit seizes me with an iron grip and won’t be satisfied until I’ve emptied out the pantry, sorted every package and box and can of food, and replaced them again. It’s usually a comical affair as my mom and I chuckle at the ridiculous artifacts of gift baskets and deep discounts we find lurking at the back of the cupboard. And upon returning home, I tend to find myself inspired to root through my own pantry to create meals with odds and ends I already have on hand.

Almond Chicken

This dish came out of one such rooting. An excess of white rice, leftover almonds from my holiday toffee-making, a can of water chestnuts, and chicken and peas from the freezer, seemingly disparate parts, became something great together as this Almond Chicken. With the addition of a green onion and a bit of sherry and soy sauce, it’s a quick meal that requires only a few minutes of stir-frying and a fluffy bed of rice.

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Cheddar & Apple Salad Bites

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Little appetizers

There is rarely a time when, if one is put in front of me, I will turn down a savory bite of something served on a cracker. Whether it’s cheese and fruit or creamy dips or thinly sliced cold cuts, if I lived alone and chose to appease only my deepest food-desires, I might never lift a fork to a plate of un-crackered food again.

Tray of tasty treats

These little bites grew out of a fortuitous collection of ingredients I happened to have on hand after returning home in January. A last hoorah of apples from the fall, a couple packs of crackers I didn’t use at my food-filled Christmas party, and a precious gift of maple cheddar from some dear friends who live in Wisconsin.

The stars of the show

Apple & cheddar cheese are a match made in heaven. The pairing of a sharp, creamy bit of cheese against a sweet, juicy apple would be delicious enough, all on their own, on these crisp little crackers. And I won’t lie, I’ve eaten my fair share of little bites just like that. But these little bites are more than that. The apple and cheddar are chopped into tiny little wedges and cubes with a tangy, punchy dressing.

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Pasta Marsala

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Flavorful pasta twist

I’ve grown tired, lately, of regular pasta sauce. Not of pasta, mind you. I crave that all the time. But these days, every time I sit down to make or order a pasta dish, I try to find something that is not marinara or alfredo.

While traipsing about the internet, I ran across a recipe for chicken marsala, which I’ve eaten at restaurants but never cooked myself. The thick, tangy brown sauce, full of mushrooms and drizzled over chicken, looked wonderfully decadent, and I started wondering how it would taste on pasta. It seemed it might be just the breath of fresh pasta-sauce-air that I was looking for.

Pretty creminis

For those of you out there who love chicken marsala, you won’t be surprised to hear that this dish starts with a large pile of mushrooms. You can use any variety you like, but I love using creminis. Even though they ultimately get drowned in brown sauce, they’re just so dang pretty when you clean and chop them up, aren’t they?

Sliced for saucing

And the other half of chicken marsala? The chicken, of course! Chicken breasts are sliced in half to create thin, fast-cooking filets. I dredged mine in a mixture of flour and parmesan cheese to create a golden-brown, slightly crunchy coating.

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How To’sdays: A New Series of Kitchen Tips, Tricks, and Tutorials

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Brulee!

When I started this blog, I knew that a huge part of the story would reflect my growth and learning in the kitchen, through successes and failures. I’ve learned, sometimes through trial and major error, to make pie crust, homemade cheese, fresh yogurt, beef jerky, canned tomato sauce… the list goes on and on.

And I’ve loved sharing these stories with you. But every once in a while, I am reminded that not everyone is learning the same things at the same time that I am. On one of my earliest posts, someone asked for clarification on how to separate an egg. Other readers have asked for advice topics ranging from tempering chocolate to selecting produce, from substituting ingredients to finding equivalents in other countries.

Flattening

I don’t profess to be a master of all kitchen knowledge, but in a lifetime of baking and cooking, I’ve picked up quite a few tips and tricks that I now take for granted when I step into the kitchen to start a project. Why should I keep them all to myself?

So without further ado, I am pleased to introduce How To’sdays! Each How To’sday post (which I’ll publish only on Tuesdays, for obvious puntabulous reasons) will be just what it sounds like: a How-To tutorial of some little kitchen tip that may make your life easier, more delicious, or more manageable.

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Raspberry, Orange, & Lime Smoothie

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A little taste of summertime
Not to add to the din, but I feel like I’ve seen a ton of smoothie recipes popping up in the food blog universe. Despite the typically chilly weather outside, I’d wager a guess that January is the number-one month for smoothies, juice cleanses, and salad-eating.

And even I have this conflict. The desire both for thick, warm soups that shut out the cold of January but also for light, fresh meals that taste like the spring and summer to come.

Plus, Santa brought me an immersion blender for Christmas, and what better way to break it in than by crushing the heck out of some frozen raspberries?

Blenderrrrrrr

The disparate parts

This is a little smoothie. I can never get through a full-size smoothie, so this recipe is for about a half-pint. You can easily double it if you are full-size smoothie drinker.

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Colorado Cape Cod Chowder

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Cozy January meal

Let me begin by saying that I realize the title of this post doesn’t make sense. Colorado is home to neither capes nor cod. I know.

I also know that I cooked this meal in North Carolina and cooked this meal using East Coast cod.

In addition, I have no idea what chowder from Cape Cod actual tastes like. No idea what the recipe is. So despite the fact that both my mom and grandma have been making “Cape Cod Chowder” (as is written in my grandma’s hand on a splattered recipe card) to ward off the chill of January in Colorado for my entire life, I couldn’t really call it that for fear of the wrath of proper Cape Cod residents with their own opinions on what is or is not Cape Cod Chowder.

It’s rather dizzying.

Chowder time

But I adore this soup. I look forward, each winter, to the stick-to-your-bones warmth provided by this hearty meal composed of relatively simple ingredients.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: The Fall and The Year

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Im-not-totally-crazy

On January 1st of last year, I began meticulously tracking my food purchases, both for groceries and for dining out, to see how much of my money was going toward locally-produced & sustainably-grown food. It was a daunting task. I logged every receipt, made notes of my cash use at farmers markets and on nights out, and even calculated the market value of the produce grown in my garden plots. Though I originally planned a monthly post documenting my progress, life did what it does and I ended up grouping together the months in roughly seasonal quarters. Now, having tracked for a year, I wanted to take a look back at my spending to see how I did.

But first: a brief moment to discuss my September-December expenses (since, you know, that just ended).

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Cranberry Orange Marmalade

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Marmalade for the holidays

I’ve always strongly associated oranges with summer. Their summery orange glow, bright flavors, and balmy geographic origins have all contributed to this perception. And yet I also remember that my dad always brought home the best grapefruits, even in thoroughly NOT balmy Colorado, in January and February. Occasionally, we’d receive boxes of citrus as Christmas gifts, and I even recall the local chapter of FFA selling them to neighbors as a fundraiser in the weeks preceding the holidays.

Citrus is cultivated year-round in many of the southern-most states of our continent, but it really shines in the winter. Not surprisingly, when I was driving back to North Carolina from a late-November trip to Florida with the fam, I simply couldn’t resist stopping at a roadside stand for a bag of this fruit so far outside my normal local fare.

Florida souvenirs

I probably could have just eaten or juiced each and every one of these golden orbs, but I’ve been curious for some time about marmalades. I don’t remember growing up with marmalade in the house, though my mom confirms that she loved it when she was a child. Our spreadables tended to be homemade from the berries and stone fruits my grandma and grandpa grew in their garden, so perhaps that accounts for the marmalade vacuum of my youth. I’ve heard from some that marmalade is an acquired taste, that it’s a bitter product not suited for those who prefer sweet jams. I wanted to give it a shot, but wasn’t sure how I would feel about a bitter final product. I ran across this recipe, a blend of oranges and cranberries, and thought that it might be just the transitional product between sweet and bitter I was looking for.

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