thoughtful consumption

Susan rediscovers the microwave

I’ve got some half-roasted butternut squash in the fridge. My plan was to broil slices of it for a side dish, but last time they came out too dry. So this time I steamed the slices in the microwave for 3 minutes, and they were perfectly serviceable. (The drizzled butter and maple syrup probably helped.)

Maybe next time, I’ll steam the slices and the broil them for just a tiny period. I want to see if I can get some good caramelization.

“It’s amazing this doesn’t taste absolutely horrible.”

How’s this for a nice vegetarian supper?

Butternut squash with goat cheese and baby bok choy leaves with raisins and pinenuts

The leaves and stems of the baby bok choy are pretty when they’re kept together.

I bet people who are better at presentation than I am could use the pretty shape of baby bok choy to make a lovely dish.

But the leaves and stems need different amounts of cooking time. So I just separated the whole bunch.

I mixed in some of the bok choy leaves with salad and made the rest based on the Kale with Raisins and Pinenuts recipe, which I like because the greens are only barely cooked. Chris and I have a hard time eating cooked greens, so the rawer the better.

Halfway through supper, Chris announced, “It’s amazing this doesn’t taste absolutely horrible.” High praise, indeed, for cooked greens.

Goat cheese

A couple of weeks ago, I trekked to Bowdon to pick up some goat cheese. Nancy warned me that the cheese wasn’t going to last as long as the last batch. But it’s in my nature to hoard goat cheese, and I was keeping my eye out for the pink stuff. That’s my sign to scrape the pink  stuff off and consume vast quantities of goat cheese double-time.

This time there was no pink, only a subtle souring. Thankfully, I’d already eaten most of  the cheese, but what was I going to do with souring goat cheese? I looked up recipes to see what people did with sour milk. The answer: make biscuits.

Emergency Biscuits

Here’s the recipe for emergency biscuits. It calls for a cup of sour milk, and I had less than ¼ cup goat cheese. So I just went with the flow. I mixed the dry ingredients and then added the goat cheese and some butter. Then I moistened it with milk until the dough was soft. Then I dropped little clumps into the muffin tins and baked them at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

The results were pretty darn good. The biscuits are a little underdone on the inside and a little crumbly on the outside, but the sour cheese gives them a nice flavor. Sounds odd, but it’s true.

Fried rice prep

Having used all the boy choy leaves, I diced the stems for fried rice. I also threw in diced onion and diced stems from the Napa cabbage. The cabbage leaves I kept separate to be added near the end. And the rice is in the fridge, too. So I’m all set for fried rice tonight.

Bye, bye summer

We said good-bye to our last summer vegetable during yesterday’s supper. We had zucchini sausage pasta, butternut squash, and salad.

To make the pasta sauce, I browned half a pound of sausage and removed it. Then I sautéed sliced onion, zucchini, and garlic in the sausage fat plus a little olive oil. Then I returned the sausage along with a big can of crushed tomatoes rinsed out with a little red wine. Finally I added some thyme and marjoram and let it cook for half an hour on medium-low.

That’s one delicious way to eat zucchini!