Holiday Loaf

A new favorite!  

Based on a recipe from The Greens Cook Book (a long-time favorite), how have I never made this before?  I didn't know it's what was missing on our holiday table.  It took Tribute Pizza (another favorite) sharing how it's their favorite on the holiday table for me to seek the recipe out and adapt it:

3/4 c brown basmati rice, cooked
3/4 c walnuts or pecans, toasted
1/4 cup cashews, toasted
1/2 yellow onion, diced
1 T butter
sea salt
1 large garlic clove, minced
1/2 oz dried porcini mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes in hot water
1 T fresh flat parsley leaves, chopped
1 t fresh thyme leaves, chopped
1/2 T fresh marjoram or rosemary leaves, chopped
1/2 t fresh sage leaves, finely chopped
1/2 c cottage cheese
6 oz grated cheese (gruyere, asiago, jarlsberg or your favorite cheese blend)

2 backyard chicken eggs, beaten

freshly ground black pepper

Cook the rice (or reuse leftovers).  Finely chop the nuts.  Chop the soaked mushrooms and reserve the liquid for a later use.

Saute the onions in butter until translucent, season with salt and add the garlic, mushrooms, and herbs. Cook until any liquid released from the mushrooms is reduced.  Remove from heat and allow to cool a bit.  Add nuts, rice, cheeses, egg, and pepper and mix to combine.  Pack into a small, buttered loaf pan and bake uncovered for about an hour at 375 degrees, until crusty and golden.  Allow to cool slightly to set before serving.

Serve with mushroom gravy or onion sauce.  It would also make a great neatloaf or veggie patty!

Double the recipe to bake in a standard loaf pan.

4-6 servings

December in my garden

Still waiting for the rain this December, but it's cooled off (this week) after having a 90° Thanksgiving. A friend of a friend needed to rehome their chickens (all my chickens are rescues), so we just added 3 to our flock. Meet Nutmeg, Eggnog, and Anise!

Eggnog (a Leghorn), Nutmeg (a speckled Sussex), and Anise (an Autralorp)

They are young ladies, so hopefully that means we'll get some eggs soon. Most of our flock are somewhere around 8 years old so they are retired (or freeloaders).  And all of them have molted and stopped laying for the winter, so we'll see how they do in the Spring...

Plan

Start drooling over seed catalogs! Baker Creek heirloom rare seeds is my favorite (such beautiful varieties! I have a strong penchant for purple vegetables 😊) and San Diego Seed Company is local. But honestly, last year I did better with seedlings.
Other good resources for research and learning:

• Wild Willow Farm
• San Diego Sustainable Living Institute
• City Farmers Nursery
• The Water Conservation Garden

Prep

Amend hugelkultur beds with compost. Rake out chicken area for mulch. Let the chickens into more areas of the yard to eat grubs and dig up all the grasses that have grown back (after I spent so much time trying to remove that bermuda grass! 😠)

Plant
Broccoli seedlings from City Farmers interspersed with garlic cloves from Schaner Farm did so well for me last year, I'll do it again this month.
artichokes (mine's already a big healthy plant from last year's planting), asparagus (maybe next year), beets, broccoli, brussels, cabbage, carrots, celery, cilantro, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, peas, potatoes, radish, parsnips, garlic, wildflower seeds, natives (I need a cleveland sage - it's my favorite), cover crops (fava & peas)

Feed
Feed passion fruit 3 pounds of fruit tree fertilizer. I can't believe it's still flowering and fruiting.

Water

Water deep in the morning every 10-14 days if it doesn't rain. I'll continue to blast my fruit trees with water a couple times this month to help control ants, aphids, white fly & scale.

Prune

Prune grapes (I'm going to weave trimmed vines in the shade structure over the windows to create more summer shade) and blackberries. Deadhead the lavender and aroma sage. Trim back mulberry (one of the big branches will be repurposed for passionfruit vine support), guava and pepper tree by mid-December so as not to disturb the birdie nest building that will start soon. Chop up trimmings (if not used in other projects) for mulch.

Harvest

copious guavas, passion fruit, calamondins, the last of the tomatoes, winter squash, basil, parsley, thyme, chives, lavender, lemon grass, rose geranium leaves

Embracing the Casserole: Sweet Potato Gratin

I'm not usually one for casseroles, but I wanted to try an alternative to my usual twice-baked sweet potatoes.

Not everyone wants a whole half of a sweet potato, so this version allows folks to take the portion that they want and hopefully will decrease food waste.  It's also less labor intensive and takes up less space in the oven.

3 pounds sweet potatoes (I like garnet), peeled and sliced thin
2 tablespoons butter from Spring Hill
2 cup shallots, thinly sliced from Schaner Farm

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced, from Schaner Farm

1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 cup cream
1 cup whole milk
8 ounces gruyere cheese, grated

Melt butter in small skillet over medium-low heat. Add shallots and stir frequently until lightly caramelized, about 15 minutes. Add rosemary and cook 1 minute more. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Layer the sweet potato with the shallots in a 9x12-inch buttered pan, seasoning with salt & pepper as you go. Add cream & milk. Cover and bake until they soften, about 30 minutes. Top with cheese and bake uncovered a golden crust has formed, about 20 minutes.

Makes 8-10 servings

Spiced Cranberry Pear Compote

This version of cranberry sauce was inspired by a wonderfully fragrant pear from Smit Farms at the Little Italy farmers market.

1 pear, peeled, diced
zest of an orange or tangerine
1 1/2 cups apple cider
3 cups fresh cranberries
1/3 cup golden raisins

1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup rapadura sugar

1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, ground

1/4 teaspoon clove, ground

a pinch of allspice, ground

1/8 teaspoon cayenne, ground

Stir all ingredients in large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Cover, reduce heat to medium, and cook for 5 minutes, until all cranberries burst. Uncover, reduce heat to simmer until the pear is soft and the raisins are plumped, 15-20 minutes. Cool to serve at room temp. Can be kept frozen for several weeks or canned to be shelf stable.

Makes about 3 cups.

Simple Soups for Healthy Holidays

During the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it can often be difficult to want to spend the time to meal plan and cook. With stresses and flu season, we know this is a time of year when it’s very important to feed ourselves and our loved ones wholesome, quality foods. Between shopping, parties, family obligations, normal life and increased pressures, fast-food options may be increasingly tempting and good intentions for eating healthfully can go out the window. But with just a few ingredients and minimal prep time, you can have a healthy, home-cooked soup. Warm and comforting on a cool winter day, soups can easily be turned into a meal by serving them with a loaf of crusty, whole-grain bread and a salad.

Don’t want to make a big mess in the kitchen? You don’t need much equipment to make these soups:

• a cutting board 
• a good chef’s knife (or whatever knife you like to chop with 
• a pot with a lid, preferably a heavy pot, such as enameled cast iron 
• a hand-held immersion blender, which is the easiest and safest way to blend hot ingredients for smooth soups

Making these one-pot recipes means that clean-up is quick and easy, too.

These soup recipes are simple, hearty, comforting, delicious, inexpensive, and easy to put your own spin on. You could make your own stock by saving your vegetable trimmings, which can be collected and frozen to be used at a later date. Or for a quick, ready-made option, use bouillon or boxed vegetable broth. Because most of these soups are blended smooth, the veggies that need to be prepped can be coarsely chopped into roughly 1-inch cubes to get these soups going fast. Don’t want to peel the vegetables? Scrub them clean and leave the peels on for a more rustic soup, which works great with most root vegetables, such as potatoes and carrots, as well as thin-skinned winter squash, like kabocha, delicata, maybe even butternut.

Each recipe is enough for a family, to be reheated and enjoyed throughout the week, or frozen in individual servings to eat later. These recipes are also gluten-free and offer options so that they can be made dairy-free.

Want a little bit more advanced version? These recipes include ideas for different variations to mix things up to suit your tastes. Fancy them up with suggested garnishes. Holiday Bonus: soup poured into shot glasses and garnished with a pinch of microgreens are a great party appetizer!

Winter Squash Soup

Leek & Potato Soup

Carrot Ginger Soup

Tomato Soup

Vegan Chili

...or find even more soups here!

Winter Squash Stuffing

This year I plan to substitute the bread cubes with roasted winter squash cubes, to decrease the breads and increase the veggies and nutrient density on the table (and it just so happens this is gluten-free and dairy-free)...

about 1/4 cup olive oil
12 cups butternut/tahitian/acorn/your favorite winter squash, peeled and seeded, cut into ¾” cubes, from Suzie's, JR Organics, the Schaner's or Sage Mountain Farm
1 yellow onion, diced, from Schaner Farms
1 cup celery, diced
6 large garlic cloves, minced from the Schaner's
1 cup pecans, chopped from a friend of a friend's farm
1 cup fresh cranberries (or ½ cup dried)
1/2 cup golden raisins
1 large green apple, diced, from Smit Farms
fresh chopped herbs (from Suzie's, the Schaner, or JR Organics):

1/4 cup parsley

2 tablespoons sage

1 tablespoon rosemary

2 tablespoons thyme
1 cup apple juice from Smit Farms
sea salt & fresh ground black pepper to taste

If you want to prep ahead of time, this much can be done the day before serving:

• On a baking pan, drizzle the cubed squash lightly with olive oil, season with sea salt, and toss to coat. Roast at 400° until they start to soften (not totally mushy)  and are golden, stirring occasionally, for about 30-45 minutes.  Set aside.
• In a large skillet, warm 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, sage, thyme, rosemary and a sprinkle of sea salt and cook until the onions begin to soften. Add garlic and celery and cook a couple more minutes.
• Combine all ingredients - and place the mixture in a large baking dish rubbed with olive oil. 

On the day to be served:

• Cover and bake at 350° for about 30-45 minutes

Serves 12

San Diego has Seasons? YES, We Do

Spring is my favorite season; it is a time of awakening, rebirth, renewal, and while the crocuses do not emerge from the snowy ground in San Diego (they did when I lived in Pennsylvania), we still have seasonality of the foods we grow.  San Diego berries are mostly absent for a few months in fall/winter, San Diego heirloom tomatoes are at their glorious peak in the end of summer, beautiful ranunculus and anemones have recently bloomed, and good San Diego corn, especially organic, is a rarity, even when it's "in season."  But we are very fortunate: our local farmers manage to grow an abundance of beautiful, flavorful fruits, vegetables, herbs and flowers year round.  If you want to learn about San Diego's seasons, the farmers markets offer an excellent education.

Why Bother Eating Local and with the Season?

I buy foods locally and in season because I want to support the people that are tirelessly building a sustainable local food shed in San Diego with their blood, sweat and tears, often without much financial profit.  These folks are my champions, heroes and rock stars.

And yes, of course, there are some challenges to supporting our local seasons:

Everything is not always available (many things cannot be grown year-round, crops fail, weather effects how fast things grow, some items are more popular than anticipated and sell out, etc) – but this can be a beautiful thing!  We can anticipate and appreciate the beautiful foods that are in season!  We increase our creativity in kitchen.  We increase our health by increasing the diversity of foods we include in our diet, instead of sticking to the same routine of meals regardless of the season.

Also, small scale, locally grown produce may look less uniform, less consistent, or less “perfect” (but, to quote Joni Mitchell, give me spots on my apples but leave me the birds and the bees, please!).  This is not to say they are less beautiful, by no means, usually quite the opposite (think purple carrots & romanesco cauliflower).  But each carrot is going to have a more unique size and shape, which makes them harder to transport and neatly stack in vast quantity on a grocery store shelf...And it may be a less familiar type of carrot.   
I relish and celebrate the diversity! But this is also a challenge for large scale prepped food operations (real world example: school cafeteria staff needed to be trained on how to prep a locally grown variety of broccoli).

Sometimes the locally grown is more expensive because small scale farming has higher labor costs (they use less mechanized harvesting, pay their workers a decent wage, less mono crops, use practices that are better for the land in the long run instead of making it easier to make a quick buck, grow varieties chosen for flavor instead of for ease of harvest, etc.).  I find it helpful to think that this is what good food SHOULD cost; think about why other food is so "cheap" (for starters - tax subsides and at the expense of our environmental and personal health).  And our country has, like, the cheapest food supply in the world (as a nation, we spend less than 10% of our disposable income on food).  Our bodies are literally made out of the food we eat.  Shouldn't it be a financial priority to build our bodies out of the best materials we can afford? (At the risk of sounding radical:) Maybe skip the cable tv and daily Starbucks?  I don't mean that as a criticism of those with cable and coffee (but you bought fair trade, right?), just to illustrate that we have a choice of where to spend our hard earned dollars.

Think of all the good we do when we spend our dollars supporting local organic produce: we help our environment by decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels and preserving our natural resources; we help create jobs for others; we keep our dollars circulating in our local community; we support a sustainable food system; we cultivate personal relationships with the people that grow our food – all while we eat the freshest, most beautiful foods available!

Think of the alternative: we buy a cheaper product that decreases our physical and spiritual health; we support businesses that poison our environment with toxic byproducts; we encourage businesses that consolidate wealth and power, pay their workers less than livable wages, use slaves, and have dangerous and toxic working conditions – we financially profit from the misery and suffering of others.

In this society we vote with every dollar we earn and every dollar we spend.  What world will you vote for?

(Or grow your own)

Arugula Salad with Seasonal Fruit & Balsamic Vinaigrette

This salad has very similar ingredients to very popular farmers market Roots wraps...

Arrange on a plate:
a handful of arugula from Suzie's Farm (or spinach or spring mix or mizuna...)
a few pieces of thinly sliced red onion from Schaner Farm
in spring or summer: a couple of strawberries from Suzie's or JR Organics Farm, sliced
in fall or winter: several slices of apple from Smit Orchards
a tablespoon of walnut from Terra Bella Farm, halves or pieces, toasted
a tablespoon of Point Reyes blue cheese (or feta), crumbled
drizzle with...

Balsamic Vinaigrette
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil (try Ensenada olive oil for something very special!)
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon Dijon or whole grain mustard
1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Wisk or blend ingredients together with an immersion blender.

Makes about 1 1/4 cups

Build Your Own Cheese Platter

Easy, fast, delicious and beautiful! Choose your favorite combinations from any of the following catagories:

Cheeses
Go with what you love, or ask your local cheese monger (Mary from Taste) to help you with your selections (which is always fun and you get to taste a bunch of lovely cheese). I like to choose 3 that go together somehow (maybe all from the same region) or I choose 3 that are completely different. My favorite is to have one soft, one hard, and one blue.

Breads & Crackers
Bake your own or buy local. Choose an assortment or just one type. I almost always choose a fresh crusty baguette to slice up, maybe a seeded baguette to pair with a mild cheese. 

Fruit
Fresh, dried, jammed or compoted, pick fruit that pairs well.  I tend toward fresh, so right now that's dates, apples and persimmons.  I would avoid citrus, but maybe that's just me.

Nuts
My favorites are walnuts from Terra Bella Farm or almonds from Smit Orchards.

Honey
If you like, drizzle over cheeses, nuts, or fruit. Or put it in a little bowl for dipping. I love local honey and there is a lot to choose from.  Right now, I'm loving the buckwheat honey in People's Co-op bulk section.

Roasted Garlic
Lovely to include if it goes with the cheeses.  Lately, I get my garlic from Schaner Farm.  I especially love roasted garlic with soft cheese such as brie or Nicolau goat cheese (a recent favorite).

A Few Examples

• triple cream brie & cranberry compote wrapped and baked in a pie crust
• goat chevre rolled in chopped parsley and chives with roasted garlic
• english stilton, cotswold & derby cheeses, with toasted walnuts, fresh figs (quartered) and local wildflower honey
• saint-andré, winchester gouda & point reyes blue cheeses with pear, raspberries, cashews and local orange blossom honey

Arrange your selections on a pretty platter or a wood or stone serving board. I start with the cheeses arranged toward the middle, I slice thin and fan out hard fruit or pile berries in between the cheese, place the nuts so they might cascade down the cheese or fruit, then lightly drizzle honey over a bit of the fruit and nuts. Finally, I fan out sliced baguette or crackers in a circle around or alternatively, serve in a basket lined with a cloth napkin. Don’t forget to include a cheese knife, preferably one for each cheese.

Not my Grandmother's Trifle

My take on trifle this winter is not so traditional but it was delicious.  I spooned persimmon pudding into the bottom, added a few chunks of ginger spice cake, topped with a few spoonfuls of honey vanilla apple compote, then whipped up some Strauss heavy cream sweetened with maple syrup, and topped with a few pieces of toasted pecans.  It was well received and can be made well in advance of serving.  The cake and compote can be made a few days ahead of time, the pudding, whip cream and assembly up to 24 hours before serving.  You can assemble it in a large container for multiple servings, but a big spoonful of glop isn't very pretty on the plate, so I choose to layer mine in small clear glass cups or jars for individual servings.

Winter Fruit Salad

I'll be having brunch tomorrow with my mom, siblings, and extended family.  After wishing a happy holidays to my farmers today, here's what I'll bring to share:

a few tangerines from the Schaners, peeled and segments pulled apart
a few fuyu persimmons from Heritage Farm, cut in half and sliced thin
a fuji apple, a pink lady apple, a century apple pear, all from Smit Orchards, all cored and sliced thin
1/2 pound of medjool dates, pitted and roughly chopped
seeds of a pomegranate from the Schaners (here's a kitchen tip on removing the seeds)
local honey, optional

Toss the fruit pieces together and serve drizzled lightly with local honey.

Persimmon Pudding

A highly experimental recipe but it worked!  This was part of my take on trifle for my winter solstice menu, which turned out beautifully (I need to get better about taking pictures). You generally find 2 varieties of persimmon at the markets: fuyu (short, squatty shape) and hachiya (more oblong, teardropish shape). 

fuyu

The fuyu you can eat firm and are a bit sweeter when they are just a bit soft).  I do not recommend eating hachiya unless it is very, very ripe, super soft, and jelly-like, almost translucent.  If it's not, the hachiya is very astringent, which I find extremely unpleasant (but if you don't know what I'm talking about you may want to try it just for the experience). 

hachiya

3 hachiya persimmons
3 egg yolks
1 1/2 cups half & half (or milk and cream)
1/3 cup evaporated cane sugar

Scrape the soft flesh out of the persimmons and puree until smooth, yielding about 1 1/2 cups, and set aside.

In a sauce pan, heat milk/cream/half & half and sugar on low heat, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved and milk is steaming (do not boil).

While the milk is heating, in a separate boil, briefly beat the egg yolks with a whisk.  After the milk is steaming, very slowly whisk half of the milk into the yolks, then whisk the mixture all together in the saucepan.  Add the persimmon puree and cook, stirring occasionally for another 10 minutes to thicken.  If you like a very smooth texture, pour through a fine strainer.

Serve warm or cool with ginger spice cake, maybe with some whipped cream sweetened with maple syrup and toasted pecans.

Variations
Add 1/2 a vanilla bean to the milk or cream while heating, then remove pod and scrape seeds into the milk.
Add a pinch of cinnamon, cardamom, or nutmeg with the persimmon.
Use honey or maple syrup instead of sugar.

Sugarsnap Pea Soup

This was a what-do-I-have-to-make-soup-right-now recipe and it turned out awesome...

1&1/2 tablespoons Spring Hill butter or oil
1/4 of an onion from Schaner Farm
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon rosemary from Suzie's (dried up from Thanksgiving)
1 potato from Sage Mountain Farm, quartered and sliced thin
1/2 cup white wine leftover from Thanksgiving
5 cups fresh sugarsnap peas from Suzie's, tough ends removed, chopped
sea salt
4 cups vegetable stock
freshly ground pepper

In a large pot, melt 1/2 tablespoon of butter on medium high heat and saute 1 cup of chopped pea pods, just for just a couple minutes and set aside.  Melt the rest of the butter in the pot and saute the onion and herbs until soft.  Add the potatoes and wine, bring to a boil and simmer until most of the liquid have evaporated.  Add 4 cups of peas, hot stock and a bit of sea salt, bring to a boil, cover and reduce to simmer for 15 minutes.  Puree until smooth, season to taste, add that 1st cup of sauteed peas and garnish with buttered croutons.

Serves 4

Tuscan Winter Vegetable Soup

This recipe is based on my take on minestrone, winterized (by what is available at the farmers market in general and Suzie's farm stand particularly) for these chilly days. Leave the skin on if you use kabocha or delicata squash. 

1 tablespoon olive oil
½ cup onion, chopped
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoon minced fresh sage
½ cup diced fennel
½ cup diced carrot, beet, or turnip
1 cup winter squash, chopped into ½" cubes
¾ cup (cooked, canned or fresh) cannellini beans
¾ cup any type of bush beans with an edible pod (green bean, yellow wax, dragon's tongue...), remove tough end, chopped on a diagonal in 1" pieces
6 cups vegetable stock
1 cup kale, dandelion or mustard greens, chopped
sea salt
freshly ground pepper
red pepper flakes

Sauté the onion, fennel, garlic, herbs and in oil in a large pot on medium heat until they start to soften. Add carrots, squash and bit of salt and cook until they start to soften. Add beans, greens, and stock, bring to a boil, and simmer with lid askew until the squash is soft, about 10 minutes. Season to taste.

Garnish with fresh parsley and/or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.

Winter Solstice Menu

trees release their leaves to prepare for new growth

The Winter Solstice is December 22nd this year.  I don't celebrate Christmas (way too commercial and material for me) but I'm happy for the opportunities to spend time with my family and friends.  Growing up, the English side of my family always had a large Christmas Eve celebration, which is the inspiration for much of this menu.

X-mas Eve when I was very young

The spread back then

Wassail
Honey Thyme Carrots
Sugarsnap Peas sauteed in Butter with Fresh Mint
Roasted Winter Vegetables
Yorkshire Pudding with Onion Sauce
Sauteed Mushrooms with garlic
Trifle of Ginger Spice Cake, Honey Vanilla Apple Compote, Persimmon Pudding & Maple Whipped Creme Fraiche topped with toasted pecans

Pumpkin Praline Pie with a Ginger Cookie Crust

I'm still searching for the perfect pumpkin pie recipe.  Last year, I used the recipe from Chez Panisse Desserts, which was quite good but not perfect.  Here's my attempt this year (very unconventional and a bit more complex):

Crust
about 9 ginger molasses crisps
5 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons rapadura sugar

Grind the cookies in a food processor to a fine crumb and measure 1&1/2 cups.  Melt the butter and stir in the crumbs and sugar.  Press firmly in the bottom and up the sides of a pie plate.

Filling
2-3 small pie pumpkins
1/2 cup rapadura sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground ginger
a pinch of ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 cup heavy cream
seeds from 1/2 a vanilla bean
3 eggs, beaten

Cut pumpkins in half, deseed, and bake, cut side down, for minutes at 400, until soft when pierced. When cool enough to handle, scoop out flesh and add 2 cups to a food processor.  Puree with rapadura, spices and salt.  In a small pot, cook puree at low heat to evaporate off some moisture, stirring in the cream.  Remove from heat, allow to cool a bit and whisk in the vanilla and eggs quickly.

Pour the hot filling into the crust and bake at 350 for about 25 minutes, or until the top of the pie just starts to crack.

Topping
1 cup pecans, chopped
1/2 cup rapadura sugar
pinch sea salt
2 teaspoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla

While the pie is baking, mix together the topping ingredients (except for the sugar). When the pie just starts to crack, top with the topping mixture, sprinkle the sugar over the top, and bake for another 10 minutes.

Winter Squash Lasagna

I had a lot of Suzie's Farm squash around and picked up some lovely ricotta from Taste Cheese for tonight's dinner inspiration...

3 small-medium-sized winter squash (butternut, kabocha, honeybear acorn, delicata...)
olive oil
1 small onion, sliced
1/2 bulb garlic cloves, peeled
1 egg
2 cup ricotta
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, destemmed, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme, destemmed, minced
1 tablespoon fresh sage, destemmed, minced
1 package lasagna noodles
1 cup white wine or broth
1/2 pound mozzarella, grated
Parmesan, grated, optional

Cut squash in half and scrape out the seeds. Slice half the squash (varieties with edible skin: kabocha, delicata) in 1/2" slices.  Lightly oil all the squash and roast in oven at 400 until halves and soft and slices are caramelized.  Add the garlic and onion to the sliced squash and remove when cooked.  Set the sliced squash, garlic and onion aside.  When the halved squash is cool enough to handle, scrape out flesh and puree until smooth in a food processor with wine or broth; salt and pepper to taste.

In a separate bowl, beat egg and stir in ricotta, herbs, salt and pepper to taste, and set aside.

Boil noodles in salted water until a little soft but still undercooked, about 4 minutes.

In a 13x9" baking pan, coat bottom in a light layer of squash puree, then a layer of noodles, a light layer of ricotta mix, then a layer of roasted squash, garlic and onion.  Repeat until pan is full, ending with a layer of noodles. Top with mozzarella and Parmesan and bake at 350 until golden and bubbly, about 40 minutes.

Serve on a bed of arugula and drizzle with a balsamic reduction.

Serves 8-12

Variations
Add sauteed mushrooms in with the roasted veggies.

Holiday Stuffing

Based on my Aunt Pat’s stuffing, this vegetarian stuffing is so good, I never miss the bird!

2 tablespoon olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
fresh chopped herbs:

  1/4 cup parsley

  2 tablespoons sage

  1 tablespoon rosemary

  2 tablespoons thyme
1 cup celery, diced
6 large garlic cloves, minced
6 cups multigrain (or other locally baked) bread, cut into ¾” cubes
2 cups apple juice
½ bottle white wine (or more juice)
1 cup pecans, chopped
1 cup fresh cranberries (or ½ cup dried)
1 cup golden raisins
1 large green apple, diced

sea salt

fresh ground black pepper

Warm the oil over medium heat. Add onion, sage, thyme & rosemary and cook until the onions just begin to soften. Add garlic and celery and cook a couple more minutes.

Combine all ingredients - except wine and juice – and place the mixture in a large baking dish. Moisten by adding about a third of the wine and juice. Cover and bake at 350° for about an hour, periodically adding the rest of the wine and juice to keep it moist.

serves 8-10

Thanksgiving Quinoa

This recipe is based on what I usually make as a Thanksgiving stuffing, and would be a great stuffing for those avoiding wheat.

4 cups quinoa, well rinsed
4 cups water
sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, minced
1 tablespoon fresh sage, minced
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced
1/4 cup garlic, minced
1 cup white wine
1 large crisp & tart apple, peeled and diced
1 cup fresh cranberries
1 cup pecan, roasted & chopped
1 cup golden raisins
2 tablespoons fresh flat leaf parsley, minced
4 cups apple juice
black pepper

In a large pot, bring the water, quinoa, and 1/2 teaspoon salt to a boil, lower to a simmer, cover, and cook until water is absorbed (about 10 minutes).  In a wide-bottom pot or large skillet, heat the oil on medium-high heat.  Saute onion until soft. Add thyme, sage, rosemary & garlic and cook, stirring, for a few minutes. Add the wine, turn off heat and allow to steam, uncovered. Add all ingredients to the cooked quinoa, and cook, stirring until liquid is absorbed.  Salt & pepper to taste.

Serves 8-12

Cranberry Compote

Great on stuffing, rolls, baked brie, sandwiches and all your favorite holiday foods.  This recipe is based on Julia Child's cranberry sauce.  And I think I'm going to can it this year for Winter Solstice gifts...

1 large granny smith apple, peeled, diced
1 large orange, zested, peeled, seeds removed, diced (or a cup of kumquats or tangerines, leave skin on)
1 cup orange juice, apple cider, or liquid of your choice
3 cups fresh cranberries
1 tablespoon cider vinegar, lemon juice or other vinegar
½ cup maple syrup, honey or your favorite sweetener
¼ teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne, ground, more or less to taste

Pour juice and cranberries into large saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the rest of the ingredients, including orange zest. Cover pan and bring to boil. Stir, reduce heat to medium, and cook covered for 5 minutes, until all cranberries burst. Uncover, reduce heat to low and simmer until gelled, about 20 minutes. Cool to serve at room temp. Can be kept frozen for several weeks.

Makes about 3 cups