Plus that squash is great food if you want to trim down some. I know when I stay true to winter squash et al–meaning there’s no silver bullet here and the idea is to eat a variety of  fresh seasonal vegetables–the scales tip in a favorable direction.

Long time friend in Northern Arizona says it’s true for him too. Here’s a shot of the harvest Bob sent along with a note:

Jean,

We have been eating a lot of this stuff this winter and have found that a piece of any kind of squash with a couple of poached eggs on it is an awesome breakfast. With something like half an acorn it is easy to turn it into a real show piece.

Now that Beth is retired I have been eating much more of her cooking and have lost twenty-five pounds. I went over to Mac’s and retrieved all his old Levis that now fit me.

Bob

[Note: Mac is my former husband, a tall bean pole of a Grand Canyon hiker guy while he walked the planet.]

****************

Squash goes great in a lunch box too. Here is fare I toted out one fall when there were still fresh tomatoes around. Nice meal it was:

sweet dumpling squash wedges
steamed beets
tomatoes
blue cheese
soynuts
on a bed of brown rice and garden greens
dressed with oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper.

A fraction of the cost of paying the man for unhealthy questionably sourced food as well.

Spaghetti squash is one of my favorites. Here’s a half ready for the oven on my griddle.

And here’s a warm salad I conjured up with it during pomegranate season over the holidays.

The flash cooked kale dressed with the usual suspects: oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper is a great foil to the sweet squash.

The walnuts and ruby jewel goodies help pull the whole thing off.

Speaking of squash, here’s what my oven looked like this morning.

Baking up some squash ahead for dinner.
Roasting some garlic to spread on polenta.
And warming some spice bread I made with squash for breakfast.

Not only did I get some nice food ready for later, the kitchen got warm enough to make folks want to linger a bit over coffee.

Not a bad deal all in all.

Oh. Did I say I’m down too?

Closing in on ten pounds and feeling skppety-do-dah.

I think each of these readings is 3 minutes or so. Hope you have time for a listen. Merry Howdy, Jean

if you’re inspired–and I hope you are–you click over to the cookbooks page and take advantage of the December sale–all told with the free domestic shipping it’s a 20 percent savings

First I roasted some plums and peaches. Balsamic on the plums, red wine over the peaches and sugar sprinkled over all. Why the same pan? I was lazy.

Then I ate the plums. Scarfed them right up. So the project became the peaches. These got sliced and stirred around in their winey goop. Then I used the leftover polenta like flour and oats for a cobbler crust. All it took was some butter and sugar worked in for a nice spready hit that covered the peaches. Into the oven and then under the broiler at the very end to brown it up a bit more.

Voila! A lovely offering that comes from being thrifty, working in season, and not being afraid to be your own boss in the kitchen.

Cooking Beyond Measure, p. 72.
On Roasting Vegetables—

Vegetables roast marvelously well from low to high temperatures. On highs around 450 F, colors are preserved but you have to watch things like a hawk. Medium ovens of 350 work well too, and depending on what you’re roasting, munchies will be yours in a half hour. Then again if you’re going out for a walk you can turn the oven to 250. When you return, you’ll have the sweetest caramelized morsels a soul could ever ask for.

My preferred roasting vehicle is—or was—Jessie Branom’s extra large cast iron skillet. The iron and the sides of the pan cradle the vegetables in a cocoon of heat that caramelizes, and the veggies y turn out sweet and golden. Baking trays work too, but as you’ll discover if you use both vehicles like I usually do, the results cast iron produces are decidedly superior. Yet at this writing, a new over-sized cast iron skillet is on my shopping list. Here’s why.

Jessie Branom and my mother were close friends in Phoenix during the early 1960s where they raised their families. Jessie had two children; Mom had four. So the women reasoned that my mother should have the big frying pan Jessie owned, and Jessie should have my mother’s medium sized skillet. The swap was made, and much later after Mom passed away Jesse’s skillet came to me. I used it for years but as a historian who thinks in terms of centuries, I’m aware of how numbered our days are—and how things can get lost in the shuffle at the end of life.

So it was that Thanksgiving of 2007 when Jessie’s first granddaughter married, I posted the skillet swathed in wedding wrap. As I wrote to the young bride, Jenny Branom Patberg, “Great scratch cooks have used this skillet for a half century. May its journey go on.”

Postscript: I have by this time, 3 years after the above was written, purchased a new skillet which has definitely earned its keep and love as a new member of the kitchen family.

We’ve identified the problem with SAD, the Standard American Diet. These days, most know that shopping the perimeter of the grocery is a healthier, more affordable way to fill the larder than schlepping into the inner aisles for things in crinkly packages. Many more are hip to the local, seasonal buzz that has centered the delicious revolution in one’s own eco-region, if not one’s own backyard. Yet, we keep consuming more ready to eat food than our health and wealth can stand. Why?

Culinary history suggests formal recipes have put too fine a point on cooking. At the end of a long day, few of us are in the mood for doing the equivalent of a small chemistry experiment when all we want is dinner.

Besides, following rote directions from elite cooking authorities in your own kitchen isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Here they got to have all the fun of creating the recipes, and we’re pretty much relegated to being technicians. Putting on your reading glasses to make dinner? What’s wrong with this picture?

Americans only got measuring cups in the early 1900s, and everyday cooks around the world today still go with the flow. Back in the 1950s when renowned British foodie, Elizabeth David studied Mediterranean food, the Italians welcomed her into their kitchens, but they took little interest in quantities or measurements. According to David’s official biographer, Artemis Cooper (Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David), “David marked a jug out in both imperial and metric measurements, and on occasions ‘I stood over the cooks and simply forced them to show me what they meant by a handful.’”

The late food and wine critic who loved France so much he moved there, Richard Olney, did the same thing, but with clear reservations. In his introduction to Lulu’s Provencal Table, published in 1994, Olney writes that imprisoning the art of cooking in chilly formulas is like robbing a bird of flight.

The point is, of course, that we’d probably cook more great tasting, healthy, affordable food if we left our measuring cups behind.  That’s why I included this easy-peasy way to roast roots in Cooking Beyond Measure. They are esp good with homemade ketchup.

In other words, simple everyday cooking just isn’t that difficult and the food you’ll turn out will be right up there with Garrison Keillor’s Powdermilk Biscuits—the ones “that give shy persons the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.” That’s what cooks in the world’s great ethnic traditions who cook creatively know. That’s what our ancestors knew. And that’s what we can rediscover ourselves.

Celeste has turned into a camera hound since she heard HH, a male frog in our town, spotted her on the back cover of Beyond Measure. She sniffs that she’s not too interested, but the truth is, she invited him over once harvest is on the wane.

So you can see, she has me hard at it. Trays full of whatever bounty comes through the door, roasting in the oven. Then it’s just a matter of bagging them up in ziplocks. Or even freezing first on the trays and then bagging so come winter we can pull out just what we need.

Plums, peppers, and tomatoes roast beautifully–and it’s so much easier that stirring a pot on the stove and worrying about burning. I also did some peaches and oh, the smells in the kitchen. Even Celeste was distracted from her romantic interest momentarily. Then there are apples. Roasted apples. Talk about having your kitchen smell homey and good. And getting harvest’s bounty put up easily and quickly.

Yes, basking in the aroma of roasted food. Earthy. Elemental. Something that strikes a chord in creatures of all kinds.

We had a fleeting few scorchers last week in Portland, Oregon, but even fluke weather must give way to the changing of the seasons. Now with the equinox just days away on the 22nd, the days have grown brisk and flipping the over on to do a little roasting seems like the very thing. And, wouldn’t you know, roasting’s a great way to get the last of the peppers and squashes and eggplants ready for the freezer–that is if the fans don’t eat them first.

Roasted squash and peppers turn into different animals. Sweet and earthy. So good you can eat them plain like pieces of fruit. Or smear a little pesto on for a quick snack. Then again you could get into chopping them up to put with eggs or whole grains or legumes. A little lace of olive olive and wine vinegar and maybe some walnuts over the top. Yes. This is good food. Affordable, healthy food.

This time of year cues to chow down on sugar+butter are as ubiquitous as canned holiday music. So if you’re trying to keep things under wraps and still want something oh so luscious, try baked pears. D’Anjous are my favorite to bake because they hold their shape. And when I was at the store recently, they were 50 cents a pound cheaper than the other varieties as well.

I stepped outside and got some fresh rosemary for this roast of spaghetti squash, carrots, and onions. Even with mincing the herbs and a little garlic, I had the pans in the oven in 5 minutes.

Yes, the roasting took 20 minutes or so, but I was elsewhere cruising back to the kitchen only after 10 minutes when the timer called me for a check and stir. And look at all the food. Plenty of leftovers for lunches and anything else we dream up.

SAD, the Standard American Diet, relies almost exclusively on low calorie salad veggies like lettuce, tomatoes, and cukes–relegating things like winter squash for pumpkin pies and roots like turnips for jokes.

As this image shows, though, once you’ve oiled up some wedges of stick-to-your-ribs winter squash and a quartered rutabaga, rubbing them with a little paprika and oregano is all it takes to ready them for a roast in the oven.

(I go slow roast at 200 when I’ve got a couple hours before a meal which turns out sweet, caramelized vegs. But if I’m in the kitchen on the make for dinner, 350 or even up over 400 gives me crispy critters in a flash.)

If you get this quick fix together even once, I wager you’ll be roasting vegetables fairly often through the season. After all, what’s not to like. Warm. Sweet. Filling. Healthy. Thrifty.