Squash, and other squishy things

Now that it's truly fall, we're getting a hard squash or two or three every week. This is actually kind of hard to keep up with, because Ed's not a huge fan of squash, and it's not my favorite thing. Can I have more greens, please? Anyway, we're using the squash, and my latest thing has been to just roast a slice or two off this gargantuan butternut squash every night as we make dinner, to take for lunch. It's a good squash, as far as squashes go, and it's not that hard to eat a slice of squash every day.

Anyway, we've made other things, too. I believe it's all getting out of order, now, but hey, worse things have happened in the world.


This was like a deconstructed bowl of ramen. Or something. A true Ed-creation, while I was at practice, and it was actually pretty good. I think those are some broccoli rabe (confession: I bought them at Whole Foods. Yes, we ran out of green things!), under a chicken thigh, with a pile of grated marinated candy beets, some soba noodles in a burned garlic sauce, and soft boiled eggs marinated in a soy-ish marinade. The burned garlic sauce was interesting, but I don't think we need to try it again.




This is more of my traditional manner of eating butternut squash - roasted, with onions, and drizzled with a lemon tahini sauce. I think the squash seeds were scattered on top - really helps with the texture. The tahini and lemon play really well with the sweetness of the squash, I make this dish a lot, because it just tastes good. The original is something like this: Ottoloenghi's butternut squash and red onion. I highly recommend.



Served that squash with a salad of beets and greens, and a thick pork chop cooked with husk cherry chutney. Pretty delish.

Ed's birthday dinner was a riff on surf and turf. Filet mignon, dayboat scallops with brown butter, shrimp in a sriracha-butter sauce, and various vegetables. Broccoli rabe with garlic and lemon, beets with caramelized onions and pickled shallots, and some fried potato rounds. Really delicious! Birthday meals are the best, because you can to taste them as well as the birthday person :)


I think this was the meal that Ed made the night we picked up the CSA. I was at practice, and he texted me to say he had dinner sorted. I was all like "awesome! thanks!" and then he mentioned that maybe I ought to be worried about that. I wouldn't normally think to be worried about Ed cooking dinner, I mean, he's good at cooking.

But then he served us up some thrice-cooked chicken feet. Hmm. Turns out, they weren't terrible. Boiled, to break down the collagen, then baked, to dry them out, then fried, to crisp them up. Tasty little nuggets of collagen and maybe some protein, but, I'm not sure I need to eat more of them. Ed pointed out that the difficulty of cooking them probably contributed to the fact that they were all on the sale shelf at the store. Yep.

We ate them with a hash of sorts, with turnips, corn, green peppers, bacon, onions, and potatoes. That part was really good! And Ed cooked the skinny eggplant cut in half lengthwise, spread with some of our fermented sriracha, and baked, and that was also really good.




More meat from the sale shelf - some sort of steak, with a lime-y marinade. It was quite tasty, but hiding under those potato wedges (delish. the potatoes they've been providing us with are just amazing. or maybe just small, and small potatoes are amazing. Not sure) is some very burned radicchio. We had a nice little rice salad hiding under the steak, having cooked some brown rice in corn stock, and then added corn kernels and scallions and some cottage cheese and some oyster mushrooms.

Then I went and pulled an Alex and dumped a pile of mixed brassica greens on top of the plate. We didn't have any green things! not ok. Ed's comment was that other than the random pile of greens and the burned radicchio, he would absolutely order that dish in a restaurant. I suppose I would, too, but with the random greens.


A tasty pasta dish with a beets and greens salad. The salad had a nice pesto dressing, first time I'd thawed one of our frozen pesto cubes, and I am totally sold to that method of storing pesto.

The pasta dish was tomatoes, the last of the collards, corn kernels, and turnips. Really good! I wouldn't normally think to put turnips on my pasta, but it worked. This dish could have used squash, but Ed vetoed that idea.


And the picture that probably should have come first: week 15's haul.

2 acorn squashes
2 eggplants
lots of potatoes
paste tomatoes
collards
turnips, with their greens
head lettuce
baby brassica
3 green peppers
6 ears of corn
1 apple computer. oh wait, that one might not have come in the CSA