butternut squash and chickpea stew with israeli couscous

SHOO FLY PIE: It's real!

Well jeez, there's a lot to recap here. Let me begin with a belated Thanksgiving-themed aside. I mean, giving thanks should not be a seasonal gesture. But this post does involve squash, cinnamon, and cranberries, so it probably has a hint of seasonality to it anyways.

I went back home for the entire week of Thanksgiving, and I think the best way to summarize the trip is to be thankful for a large number of people, places, and opportunities. I am thankful for quality time with family. For getting to have a little chat with my great grandfather. For running a 5k with my sister. For the memories and stories shared while browsing my great grandmother's jewelry. For old friends, especially when hanging out is just like it used to be. For random care packages full of apple butter from lovely people. For cooking with old pals and teasing a corgi. For the beauty of the Valley and Ridge. For the continued growth of my favorite hometown market. For the store that employs grandmas to bake their shoo fly pies just right. For my three year old nephew, who distracted everyone from my weirdo veggie sausage at the Thanksgiving dinner table with his bowl of cereal with a side of hot dog. :)

And on a less vacation-y note: I am thankful for my husband, who loves and encourages me 110%. I am thankful for my cat's continued antics and my dog's ability to melt my heart at least a hundred times a day. I am also thankful for my job, where my co-workers make it fun every day, even though we work in a sunless dungeon. And thanks to you, for reading my blog! 

Now I will talk to you about some soup, because we all know I love soup. Well, I guess it is more of a stew... woo variety? :)

This recipe was first made possible by the thoughtful nature of my sister in law. Backstory: there was a totally amazing cold salad served at my wedding with israeli couscous and grapes in it. Since she's a whiz in the kitchen, my darling relative went home and recreated it. Once she sent me the recipe, I was all about making it. There was one problem: I could not find the giant couscous anywhere! Cue the care package full of couscous. My hero! I believe it is now available at one of the more upscale grocers in the area, under the name of pearl couscous. So go make some tasty stew full of seasonal goodness. If you can't find the cute couscous, I recommend orzo or ditalini (a favorite pasta in our kitchen -- it's so cute!). We also make this with dried cranberries, but I'll bet dried cherries are super amazing too.  I think when I grow up we'll be sure to serve this at our Thanksgiving dinners. :)

roasted miso curry

If you are looking to prepare more colorful meals, I suggest you give this a go. This was definitely one of those times where I wanted to pat myself on the back for having such a fun-looking dinner. In college my boyfriend (now husband!) challenged me to eat more colors since I was a very beige-centric eater. Weird how things change sometimes, eh?

So this past weekend I took a cooking class for the first time ever (Thanks, Mom!). I assume high school HomeEc doesn't count, right? I took a lovely class entitled Delicious Mediterranean Vegan, as instructed by chef Robin Asbell. I figured I wanted to take a class on a) something new that I don't already make all the time, and b) something I could eat. So that ruled out all the classes on soups and cupcakes. Knife classes could be useful, but mostly involved carving (then eating) meat. Wine tasting classes were too expensive. Baking bread is something I'm pretty comfortable with by now. So why not vegan? There's nothing bad or wrong or gross about plant-based food. In fact, my favorite part of the class (beside eating super tasty food, duh!) was learning super cool vegan nutrition facts. I think by necessity vegans are some the most knowledgable folks when it comes to nutrition. Robin often started with "Sorry this is boring, but..." before she went into nutrition/food chemistry stuff, but I loved it! The whole class felt like a conversation with her, and she told us lots of funny stories about being a vegan. As a vegetarian, I am totally familiar with some of the most annoying classics -- everyone thinks you're weird, there's always that one person who can't give it up/teases you relentlessly with hamburgers, getting really tired of people asking "but where do you get your protein?!"... and so on and so forth. Therapy.

During the class, I often found myself thinking, hey, I could totally do this! I love cooking for people. I love researching and experimenting. Such a scientist, I know. But one of my major hang ups about being a geoscientist is that I don't think I help people enough. I fell in love with my college over the recruiting campaign slogan "Think One Person Can Change The World? So Do We." The students are all passionate about something, and making the world a better place. I don't think I do enough of that. Sometimes I think I should have been a nutritionist or a food chemist. For now, I blog, and I hope I get people to try making themselves some good real food. :)

One more thing! I found out during class why onions make you cry! It turns out there are sulfur compounds released when you cut into an onion. Once they are airborne, they mix with the water in your tears, and BAM! Sulfuric acid in your eyeballs! Ahhh! Don't you feel so validated?! I always thought I was a total wuss and that one day I'd get used to it. No dice. It hurts like crazy every time. In fact, cutting onions even makes the cat cry, and he has three eyelids per eyeball, so I am so not the wuss here. Solution: I will continue to look super cool wearing my Onion Goggles in the kitchen, and otherwise be confused about why it doesn't hurt when I'm wearing contacts. But let's get serious here, I never wear my contacts. Glasses are way, waaay, cooler.

Enough of my stream of consciousness spouting forth at you. There's a dinner at stake here, yes? This recipe calls for pepitas. Don't let this fool you; these are just simple raw pumpkin seeds. I was all "oh, I don't know what that is, and I am ashamed, so I will just go ahead and use these pumpkin seeds here. Those will toast up nicely." Then I Googled it later. Now you can scoff at the gourmet word with me, and just call them pumpkin seeds, dammit. Maybe next time I will overcome my fear of asking someone at the coop if they really don't have any delicata squash. I get very shy while shopping at the coop for no really good reason.

Roasted Miso Curry
adapted from Miso-Curry Delicata Squash, yet again from Super Natural Every Day

12 oz. butternut squash
1/4 c. olive oil
1/4 c. white miso (of the fifth taste, umami. I will leave you with this to blow your mind.)
1 T. red curry paste
12 oz. extra-firm tofu (frozen and then defrosted, trust me, it is worth it!)
5 small-medium-ish purple potatoes, unpeeled, cut into ~1 cm cubes
2 T. fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 cups kale, stems removed, then cut into ribbons and cooked
1/3 cup toasted pumpkin seeds
oodles of cilantro, to taste/tolerance

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F with a rack in the middle of the oven.
2. Peel the squash. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, then cut the halves again lengthwise (so now you have long quarters). Cut these pieces in 1/2 inch slices to make lots of little curved wedges.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together olive oil, miso, and curry paste. Combine the tofu, potatoes, and squash in a large bowl with 1/3 c. of the miso-curry paste. Turn the vegetables onto a rimmed baking sheet and arrange in a single layer.
4. Roast for 25 to 30 minutes, until everything is tender and browned. Toss once or twice along the way, after things start to brown a bit. Be careful not to burn anything.
5. In the meantime, whisk the lemon juice into the remaining miso-curry paste, then stir in the wilted kale until coated (it soaks up the lemon juice in a very delicious way! I'd also recommend using this time to toast your seeds too.)
6. Toss the vegetables gently with the kale, pumpkin seeds, and cilantro. Enjoy! You'll always want your tofu this way for ever and ever.

**This recipe is an example in being a sneaky vegan: Don't tell anyone that you've cooked something vegan until after they ate it. Or just don't say anything. I totally pulled this on my husband a few days ago. Sneaky!**

farro soup with butternut squash and kale

There are a lot of food bloggers that I admire. In particular, Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks continues to knock my proverbial socks off. After my birthday I found myself wondering around in a bookstore (noooooo!), and they just so happened to carry her brand new cookbook. I took a peek at it, and totally fell in love. I wanted to make all of it, right then and there! It's pretty cool when you find a vegetarian blogger that has a similar cooking style (and I aspire to cook more like her too). I like food that is warm, solid, and healthy, and generally I like it most if it gets made in one pot. One jerk of a reviewer called it "roly-poly vegetarian". Do you just walk around gnawing on carrots straight out of your organically farmed soil? Sorry sir or ma'am, if you are that jerk and you are reading this, but I think you could find a better word for it. It's damn good food. I like it. I dig that I enjoyed a delicious dinner (and leftovers!), and it didn't occur to me until I was cleaning up that it was totally vegan. Pat on the back.

So farro. It's hip and trendy. From what I gather, it's a whole kernel of wheat. It cooks up pretty quickly and has a nice chewy texture. You can also substitute for it with barley (cheaper!).

Oh, and for the record, I also bought a book on Homemade Sodas. Between my newfound love of hoarding glass jars and filling them with simple syrups, and my darling new SodaStream, it was the right thing to do. More on these developments later.

Onto the soup!! I made a few adjustments, mostly to use what was in the pantry...

2 T. olive oil
2 yellow onions, chopped
2 c. peeled and diced butternut squash
kosher salt
2 T. curry powder
1/4 t. smoked paprika
1/4 t. garam masala
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
1/2 t. ground turmeric
2/3 c. farro
1 1/4 c. green lentils, picked over and rinsed
5 c. veggie broth
2 c. coconut milk
1 T. lemon juice
1/2 bunch of kale, large stems removed and cut into ribbons (I like dinosaur kale best, but that's probably just because it is dinosaur kale! RAWR!)
1/4 t. coarsely ground white pepper

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Stir in the onions and squash. Add a big pinch of salt and saute until the onions soften a bit, a couple of minutes. Add the spices and stir until the onions and sweet potatoes are coated and the curry is fragrant, a minute or so. Add the farro, lentils, broth, and coconut milk. Bring to a boil, decrease the heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 50 minutes, or until the farro and lentils are cooked through (now's a good time to prep that dino kale). Taste and season with more salt if needed. 10 minutes before the simmer finishes up, add the kale so that it wilts and cooks down. After the 50 minutes, off the heat, and stir in the lemon juice and white pepper. You can serve it with a dollop of plain yogurt (or plain + salt + lemon zest), but the soup is mighty fine all by its lonesome.

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Oh yeah, and one other thing... I think I might be a little bit more like a real blogger now. I've joined forces with the mighty MN Food Bloggers group -- check me out, I'm listed on the website alongside some serious bloggers -- Zoe Francois, anyone? I'm merely ten lines above her on that righthand sidebar. :) I totally did a little Snoopy dance when I found the site, and even more so when I realized what a great resource the group is, and I can't wait to really be a part of its community.

Now I'd better hurry up and learn to use my camera like a big girl blogger.