If I'm in the kitchen, I'm probably procrastinating.

There's nothing like midterms to make me want to get in the kitchen. It's a productive way of procrastinating. And at least if I fail out of grad school, I will have delicious food to eat.

I've been seriously abusing the deliciousness of spaghetti squash lately. I need to find something new to do with them, but they are so yummy as is. My organic CSA has an orangetti variety, which I like better for no particular reason. I've been putting together different sauces to top the shredded squash with, like the arugula pesto and tomato sauce below (I couldn't decide which to have, so I made both toppings). I think I might try spaghetti squash pancakes next.

Not one to waste things, I've been taking the seeds from all the sqashes I've cooked and roasting them in the toaster oven. Most people think you can only do this with pumpkin seeds, but almost any squash will do (pumpkins are squash too! Yay curcurbitaceae!). Once you've cleaned, washed, and dried off the seeds, toss with a scant amount of olive oil - just enough to coat - and some salt. Then you spread them on a baking sheet or piece of foil and stick them in to cook for ~30 minutes at 300 degrees, or until slightly crunchy. They're great just with the bit of salt, but I've also been adding some curry before roasting, which is so, so good, and also what is pictured below.
I've been doing a lot of baking as well. I made the chocolate chip cookies from VwaV (thumbs up all around, including those who received some as birthday gifts), which I forgot to photograph. They were eaten too quickly (mostly by me). I tried to make some peanutbutter cookies from VwaV for a coworker's party, but something went horribly awry and the result was not fit for human consumption. Believe me, I tried to eat them. I still have no idea what went wrong. But sometimes you just have to get back on the horse, so I made these tasty but not overly impressive chocolate thumbprint cookies with strawberry preserves.

I got some tat soi (or pak choi, depending on your mood) in my CSA share last week, and I had to figure out what to do with it. I looked at a bunch of different recipes for cold tat soi salads and came up with this cold sesame tatsoi, pictured here with quinoa pasta and more homemade tomato sauce. Yes, I know they totally don't go together, but I tend to eat my foods one at a time, so it worked out.




I marinated the tat soi in a bit of tamari, rice wine vinegar and an eensy bit of sugar. I let it sit too long though (overnight, oops), so the saltiness of the tamari was too much for me. Anyway, then right before serving, I mixed in a little sesame oil and sesame seeds. If it wasn't for the saltiness, I'd have given this a big smiley face or whatever you give yummy things.

I've also been excited by all the varieties of apples coming in to the farmer's market. A special treat my mom used to make is baked apples. I still make them her way: get as much of the core out without breaking through the bottom, fill the hole in the middle w/ a pat of [soy margarine] and a lot of brown sugar, then sprinkle with cinnamon and bake until soft. My brother and I used to douse these in whipped cream, which I kind of miss doing, but it's still tasty.

Before and after pictures. The apple shouldn't um, explode like that, but you get the idea. It was really strange though, some of the juice got on the pan and as it starting getting crispy it seriously smelled like marshmallows roasting!

I also made my first attempt at making applesauce from scratch, and it was AWESOME. I kind of winged it after reading a few recipes, but it came out perfect; hopefully I can replicate it in the future, since I plan on freezing a load of this stuff. Basically I peeled, cored and sliced the apples, put them in a pot with ~1 cup of water, ~1/2 cup of brown sugar, a bunch of cinnamon, the juice of half a giant lemon, and some long peels from the lemon (to be taken out later). Cook until the apples are soft, pick out the lemon peels, and put through the food mill (I did it on the chunkiest setting). Then taste and see what it needs; I put in a teeny bit more (white) sugar, a splash of vanilla, and some more water to thin it out because it was too chunky even for me. It is FABULOUS. Okay, I'll stop raving about it now.

[Blogger pictures not working now. Grr.]

And because I am always looking for more ways to add sugar to my diet (HA), my favorite way to prepare butternut squash: load the cavity with brown sugar!

[Blogger pictures still not working. Grr.]