Why should you stuff Delicata Squash? First of all, delicata squash is tender and small enough to easily slice in half with a sharp chef's knife. Once you scrape out the seeds and pulp, you have perfect boats for stuffing. For bonus points, the skin is thin enough to be eaten. That means, you don't have to peel this beautiful squash. Secondly, stuffed delicata squash is super-easy to prepare and goes with so many different flavors. My favorite recipe is this vegetarian version filled with ...
Coconut Curried Butternut Squash Soup
The calendar unleashes butternut squash cravings in me every October 1, and this year was no exception. But I was in Italy the first two weeks of the month, and searched in vain for my familiar friend on menus. It turns out, butternut squash is much more common in North and South America, as all squash originated there with Native American Indians. In Italy, winter squash isn't widely harvested, except for small family farms with a local reach. I had to wait. So, the first thing I made when I ...
Pumpkin Black Bean Chili for the Instant Pot | Vegan and Gluten-Free
I've got a new cookbook for you, my friends. My good friend Jane Bonacci, creator of the delicious The Heritage Cook blog, has a new cookbook out with Sara de Leeuw of the gorgeous My Imperfect Kitchen blog. It's titled The Gluten-Free Instant Pot Cookbook: Fast to Fix and Nourishing Recipes for All Kinds of Electric Pressure Cookers, and will be released on September 19th. Go check it out, and place your preorder here on Amazon if you're looking for some fuss-free dishes for the Instant Pot! A ...
Butternut Squash Soup with Apple Cider & Crème Fraîche
My husband was under the weather last week, and weakly pleaded for this soup from underneath a mountain of quilts one afternoon. I nearly fainted. He wasn't begging for a burger or ice cream topped with hot fudge. He was requesting, sit down for it, a vegetable based soup. That's when I realized just how sick he was. He was hallucinating that he wanted vegetables. I didn't waste any time, and set out to make this one I posted on my blog a few years ago. I love how the apple cider brightens ...
Pumpkin Applesauce Muffins with Pumpkin Seed Streusel
Secret Recipe Club: Pumpkin muffins made with fall spices, applesauce, and golden raisins, topped with pumpkin seed streusel. How is it possible I've never posted a muffin here? I've made coffee cakes, breads, and even cinnamon rolls. But never a muffin. So after more than five years of blogging, I'm finally posting one for fall. And it's one you're going to love, thanks to Karen at the Karen's Kitchen Stories blog! It's Secret Recipe Club again! Whaat? Two posts for Secret Recipe Club ...
Spiced Acorn Squash with Charred Poblano Pepper – Cornbread Stuffing
I like to think travel broadens the mind. For a snapshot in time, you sneak a glimpse of another culture, up close and personal. What people eat, how they live, and how they navigate human issues common to us all. We weigh these observations in our minds as we contrast them against our own familiar lives, and sometimes feel the pinching discomfort of a traveler far from home. “Why is there only one person selling train tickets? Holy Jesus, can’t they see how long the line is??” This can be as ...
Fig Basted Roast Butternut Squash with Quinoa, Apple, and Fig Stuffing
We should have more than one day set aside each year to give thanks. Some might declare we should give thanks every day, and I don’t disagree, but I’m actually stating we should have Thanksgiving once a month. Not with all the commercial hoopla of people rising before dawn the day after so they can shiver in dark parking lots to be in line for some amazing-never-to-be-offered-again deal on a big screen TV, thank you very much. I’m talking about quietly setting aside one day a month on ...
Pumpkin Cappuccino Soup
This soup is a love note to the Czech Republic. No, that wasn't a typo. You probably thought Italy was on my mind, what with 'cappuccino' in the title. But you would be wrong. Believe it or not, cappuccino soups are popular in Prague and beyond. I saw them no less than three times on menus while we were there earlier this month. They were all very different from each other, and my favorite was a Pumpkin Cappuccino Soup. We were in Brno (pronounced Berno), the historic capital of ...
Butternut Squash Risotto with Pears and Sage
I was lucky enough to travel in the Czech Republic and Slovakia earlier this month with a small group of 14 wonderful people. We started and ended in Prague, my new favorite city in the whole world, escaped the crowds to travel west to Karlovy Vary (a spa town very near Germany with hot springs everywhere), and retraced our steps eastward to travel through parts of Slovakia very near Poland. It was a fantastic trip, my favorite in a long time, but people, we were in the land of ...
Butternut Squash Panzanella Salad with Apples and Kale
Make an autumn version of a traditional Italian salad with this butternut squash panzanella salad tossed with apples and kale, dressed with an apple vinaigrette. I spent much of September in Italy attending an Italian language school in Treviso, a smallish town outside Venice. For 2 1/2 weeks I ate a ton of pasta, pizza, risotto, and tiramisu (a dessert created by a restaurant in Treviso). The trip was about language, food, and people -- meeting local Italians and making new friends with ...
Spaghetti Squash with Shrimp, Pears and Kale
Spaghetti squash tossed with shrimp, pears, and kale. Whenever I scan food photo porn sites and Pinterest (which is embarrassingly often), I'm bombarded with temptation. Pumpkin cakes with cream cheese frosting, salted caramel sheet cakes, pumpkin toffee cookies, pecan cheesecake pie, and Reese's cake bars, all dressed up like a gang of girls ready to party, taunt me from my computer screen. "C'mon Wimpy, get those fancy plates out and let's have some fun together. You can cheat on your ...
Pumpkin-Coconut Cookies
Soft cake-like pumpkin cookies with strong hints of coconut, topped with cream cheese icing. Cocktail party season is about to ramp up as we gallop into the final months of the year (honestly, can you even believe it's almost November??). In cocktail-speak, this means you wear something a little glitzy without being over-the-top-neon, pull out some strappy shoes, and think about dishes that are just one or two bites. Ideally they wear a little glitz too. As for the drinks, they're festive, ...
