I love to shop, but I'm a terrible shopper. I get tunnel vision and focus on the main outfit; often failing to remember that I may not have shoes or jewelry to complete the look. If I'm lucky, I realize this no later than the day before an event and can make a mad dash to the mall. If I'm super-lucky, I happen to have a pair of black shoes that will "work".
For example, in 2006 we went to North Dakota for Grant's brother's wedding. I packed a black dress that I'd owned for a few years (because it "worked"), black shoes, and a "Y" necklace that was fashionable five years earlier. After stewing about it over the 22-hour drive to North Dakota, I was feeling very self-conscious about my outfit. We had only been married a few years, and I had not spent much time with Grant's family, so I didn't want to be the squat, unfashionable little weirdo in the family pictures. It didn't help matters that my then-future sister-in-law is a tall and leggy gal (not her fault that I have hang-ups). So even though we arrived in North Dakota a mere two days before the wedding, I was determined to level up.
The day before the wedding, we did some "sightseeing" around Fargo (yes, the same Fargo as the movie). On this tour, we went to Scheels; a very large sporting goods store that sold everything from hunting gear to chocolate fudge. It also had a large indoor Ferris wheel that I thought was kind of fun (I'm easily entertained). Anyhoo, somewhere between the rifles and the fudge, they sold dressy-dresses. Talk about one-stop shopping!! Take notes, Costco! I found a dress in black and cream -- so, totally different than the dress I packed -- and decided that this was a much better choice.
The next day, the day of the wedding, I realized that I had overlooked a small but important detail about my new dream dress (which, by the way, it wasn't). The dress I bought had spaghetti straps, requiring a specific type of, um, undergarment that wouldn't show, um, certain parts of said undergarment when worn. Thankfully, we still had a few hours before the wedding and ran to the mall where I frantically ran to JC Penney and bought the aforementioned undergarment as well as a traditional circular-shaped necklace, and an evening bag. I was going to be classy, dammit!!!
Even after all that trouble, I can't say I was happy with the results...at all. I still think I look like a pasty troll in the family picture. We have this photo in our living room and it mocks me daily from its lofty perch. I'm using it as motivation to obsess over what I will wear to my stepdaughter's wedding seven months away! Maybe I'll invest in some bronzer...And just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I will share a horribly fuzzy photo of the look-that-failed.
When you're as short as I am, why would you choose
something that looks like a maternity dress?
Anyway, it hit me the other day that this is the same approach I've taken with cooking and meal-planning. I spend a decent amount of time making thoughtful decisions about what to cook for the week, take conscientious steps to cook ahead so we're not scrambling for dinner after work, only to realize I've neglected selecting side dishes to complete the meal.
This week, I/we have made an effort to plan every aspect of dinner, including the sides. This could be something as easy as grilling a bunch of asparagus, or cooking snow peas in a microwave steamer (if you don't have one, get one, they're a big time saver). If you want to be a little more ambitious, you can try the dish that I just made this week, Velvety Butternut Squash from Melissa Joulwan's Well Fed.
A few disclaimers; this is not a difficult dish, but it is time consuming. Do not make this if you need something at the last minute; do not make this if you need to cook something before running off to pick up the kids from school; do not make this if you are having dinner with people you are not 100% comfortable with (you'll see why in a minute).
But before we can even get to making this dish, we have to whip up a spice blend. I will say that this has become a bit of a pet peeve of mine. I don't appreciate recipes within recipes (I'm looking at you 3 Ingredients or Less cookbook; you feckin' liar). I also don't appreciate cookbooks that assume you have endless containers and cupboard space to store all your new and fabulous spice blends. In Well Fed there aren't a lot of separate spice recipes, but I do appreciate that Melissa Joulwan gives her readers additional recommendations for use. For this recipe you will need to make "Ral el Hanout", from the Well Fed cookbook.
Combine the following ingredients in a medium-sized bowl and mix with a fork until well-combined. You only need 2 teaspoons of the mixture for the butternut squash, so I put the remainder in a labelled Ziploc bag. The leftovers can be used as a rub for steaks, chops, and chicken, or add to ground meat for burgers or meatballs.
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons powdered ginger
2 teaspoons ground pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
"Raw" ingredients.
All blended together.
2 1/2 pounds butternut squash
2 tablespoons water
1 head of garlic (yes, an entire head of garlic)
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 tablespoons coconut milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons Ras el Hanout
1 egg
1/4 cup chopped pecans (save a few whole for garnish)
Step 1: Cut the squash in half, lengthwise and remove the guts. If the stem gets in the way, cut off the very top of the squash to create a better starting point.
Be sure to use a sharp knife. It takes a little finesse and patience to split the squash down the middle, but a dull knife will make it more difficult and no one wants a kitchen accident.
Place a piece of parchment paper (something I've never had in my kitchen before) on a cookie sheet and place the squash halves cut-side down. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons of water around the squash. [From previous experience with spaghetti squash, I would recommend checking on the butternut squash every now and then and add a little more water as needed.]
Step 2: Take one whole head of garlic and remove as much of the loose skin as possible. Wrap in a piece of aluminum foil.
Upper row: new head of garlic, garlic with papery skin removed
Lower row: foil-wrapped garlic, yummy roasted garlic
Place the squash and garlic in the oven and bake for 40-50 minutes until the squash is tender. Take both out of the oven and let cool for about 20 minutes.
See the dent on the right one? I think that translates as tender.
Step 3: Increase the oven temperature to 400F.
Step 4: Use a large spoon to scrape the flesh into a food processor (something else I didn't have in my kitchen until just a few weeks ago). Remove the remaining skin from the garlic cloves and add all of it to the food processor (told you it's not the best dish to eat with strangers). Puree until smooth.
Add the coconut oil, coconut milk, salt, and Ras el Hanout to the food processor and mix well. This is the point where you want to taste the mixture and adjust the seasoning; after this you add raw egg and probably don't want to risk a trip to the hospital (I mean, it's not cookie dough, it's not worth it).
A quick word about coconut oil. Under the Whole30 guidelines I cannot eat or cook with seed oils, such as canola oil. Most paleo recipes will substitute traditional cooking fats with coconut oil. My friend Bethany had told me about coconut oil over a year ago, but I never imagined I would be using it so much. It can be expensive though, with a small jar from Whole Foods costing about $6. To save money (by ounce) we buy a big mother-flippin' jug of coconut oil from Costco:
For scale reference, that's a tablespoon on top.
Coconut oil can replace most cooking fats (even in non-paleo recipes) in a 1:1 ratio. It has a pleasant, mild, coconut scent, and doesn't generally add any particular coconut-y flavors to recipes. The consistency reminds me of grainy vegetable shortening.
One tablespoon of coconut oil.
Step 5: Scrape the squash mixture into a mixing bowl. Beat one egg in a separate bowl and stir into the squash with a wooden spoon (the books says to use a wooden spoon, I don't know why).
Step 6: Grease a 3-cup casserole dish with more coconut oil and pour in the squash mixture. Top with chopped pecans (and a few whole pecans for presentation) and bake 25-30 minutes until the edges are bubbly and the top is golden brown.
Before the oven.
After the oven. The photograph doesn't look terribly different,
but it has a much firmer consistency.
The recipe includes variations to make it into a soup, or to use different squashes, pumpkin, sweet potatoes or yams (hmmm...Thanksgiving anyone?).
Our Velvety Butternut Squash was served with Lemon & Artichoke Chicken from Diane Sanfilippo's Practical Paleo.
And the final verdict? Pretty good! Because it uses butternut squash, I expected it to come out a little sweeter. The garlic gives the dish a savory quality that was a nice balance to the acidity in the chicken's lemon sauce. Now, I love garlic (like, I love it a lot), but next time I am going to be more cognizant of how much garlic is added to the dish. It was borderline too much; you don't want garlic to be the sole note. Next time, I'll either use a smaller head of garlic or add it in gradually and do more taste testing. I did taste the mixture before adding the egg, and the garlic was definitely less pronounced before it was baked, so that's something else I'll need to note on the recipe; **Warning** the garlic in this dish may be stronger than it "appears".
Mange!
Kimmy
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