Honey Chipotle Garlic Glazed Delicata Squash and Kidney Bean Burritos (Vegetarian)

I do still cook Mexican, it might not seem like it with what I have been blogging about lately, but we have really been enjoying some of our favorite "oldies but goodies". With all the squash around though, I am really enjoying playing with ideas for how to "Mexicanify" winter squash. Surprisingly, it isn't as hard as one might think. What I love is that most of the Mexican meals I have made with winter squash end up having the delightful sweet and spicy combination that both Brett and love so much.

I also apologize to the vegans who read this blog about all the honey I use. We strive to eat as locally as possibly, and living lower on the food chain, for environmental, social justice, and other reasons means that for us, honey fits in with our principles more than agave from far away. I imagine most of the recipes I have that call for honey could have agave subbed in without too much problem. I do also still have some agave, so I plan on using that up too - so you will see some of that in the coming weeks/months as well.

This might seem like an intensive dinner, but I made this last night, after work. I think it took about an hour, but half of that time I did other things (I read more of The Shock Doctrine). When I told Brett what I was making, he gave me this look like "are you sure this is going to be good?" I wasn't of course, this meal was just an idea I had, but as we were eating it, all questions of whether it was good or not quickly faded away. It was good - really good - this is one of the best new things I have made in awhile. And I really think that I could just eat the glazed delicata squash plain like candy. It was just that good. Oh my!

Oh, and it made our apartment smell wonderful - just wonderful. This was a mostly local meal that even included some of the tomatoes we picked green from the community garden plot that have ripened. In fact, the only non local things in this meal are the chipotle chiles, the spices, the kidney beans, and the tortillas.















The local booty legend (aka revealing my sources):
no asterisk = grocery store
+ = The Root Cellar
++ = The Peace Nook
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden
**** = the non-profit buying club, Blue Planet or Purcell Mountain Farms

Honey Chipotle Garlic Glazed Delicata Squash and Kidney Bean Burritos

Honey Chipotle Garlic Glazed Delicata Squash:
1 delicata squash, halved, seeds removed, peeled, and chopped *
1/4 cup honey +
1 clove of garlic, grated (I used a microplane grater) +
2 chipotle chiles in adobo, sliced in half

Preheat oven to 400.

Combine honey, garlic, and chiles in a bowl. Toss with the delicata making sure to coat completely.

Roast for 30-35 minutes, or until tender. Be sure to stir a few times, and "baste" with any leftover glaze.

Remove chiles before serving the squash.

Kidney Bean Mixture:
2 cups kidney beans, cooked
1 orange bell pepper, seeded and minced +
2 Anaheim peppers (or Hungarian Wax, pasilla, New Mexican chile, etc), seeded and minced +
1/2 yellow onion, chopped +
2 cloves of garlic, minced +
3 Roma tomatoes, chopped ***
ground coriander
ground cumin
salt

Heat a few tablespoons of water in a medium skillet over medium heat. Add the veggies and cook for 10-15 minutes or until soft. Add the beans and seasoning and heat through.

The Rest of the Schtuff:
tortillas
salsa (we used the local Hot and Smoky Tomatillo Salsa) +

Layer bean mixture and glazed squash in a warm tortilla. Roll up and serve with salsa.

Sadly, we only have two delicata squash left. I think I had mentioned it in an earlier post, but this is the first winter we are trying to eat as locally as possible. We wanted to stock up on as many things as we thought we could before winter, but didn't get a boiling water bath canner until quite late in the season, and also didn't know how much we would need to put away. After some discussion, we decided to just get what we thought might work, if we have to buy produce from the grocery store, so be it, we will try as hard as possible to source from at least within the US, and start getting a gauge on how much we need to put away. With all that said, it is looking like we will maybe make it to late January with the winter squash we have. I think we might be able to pick up a couple from The Root Cellar too though. We've been tearing through the delicata, the hubbard has been eaten, and we are working down all those many butternut squash we got from our community garden. We still have a few butternut, acorn, buttercup, and two delicatas. We haven't really had to break into our freezer "stash" yet as there have been peppers and such at The Root Cellar. Anyways, long story short, we are still learning, and when I looked at how low our winter squash stash was getting already, I realized that we are probably going to need more next year. But who knows, if we only eat one or two squash a week, we might make it longer than I think.

I don't know if anyone noticed the banner on the sidebar, but Brett and I are participating in the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge. This challenge entails eating and blogging about one 90% local meal a week. If you are up to it, please consider participating! Now, I actually seek some advice, by what criteria do we decide if something is 90% local? Brett and I thought of looking at it in terms of the number of ingredients (this didn't seem very good though as some of the ingredients are small and inconsequential really), calories (this would be incredibly difficult to figure out, especially since we work with mostly whole foods), and weight (this seemed like the best way to go about it, but even still, there are meals that have TONS of local stuff in it, but the weight is mostly comprised of rice, would this be a 90% local meal?). If you have any suggestions as to how to figure this out, please let us know.

I am going to consider this meal our weekly Dark Days "entry" as the local ingredients outweighed the non locals significantly.

Well, that's all I have for now. I will post tomorrow on the local booty I score from The Root Cellar after work tonight, and early next week I will post October's Garden Update - which I'm pretty excited about, I really enjoy the garden updates.

Anywho, have a great Friday!

'Til next time!

B's "Cheesy" Delicata Squash and Potato Soup

We had another "soup night" over this past weekend and I must say, for a "theoretical" soup, this turned out oh so well. The idea for this soup was Brett's. He thought that delicata squash tastes ever-so-slightly "cheesy" and that it would make a great "cheesy" style soup. Boy was he right. I helped "fill in the details" of the recipe and did the actual preparation, but the overall idea was most definitely his.

Now, I've only made soup at home a couple of times, and am fairly new to the whole thing, but this was by far our favorite yet, and it was so creamy and tasty. It was like chili too - even better the next day.

This was also my first experience cooking with leeks. I've had leeks before, but have never purchased one to cook with. All I can say is that when it comes to soup, onions better watch themselves, they've got some competition from the leeks.

I think soup and local crusty bread are becoming a Saturday tradition. I am going to have to expand our soup repertoire so we don't get burnt out on any one kind. Soup varieties in the works: Pumpkin Soup, Minestrone, Some Bean Soup (hopefully I'll come up with a better name), and Leek and Potato Soup. And these are just the ideas I've had so far. I see many cold, blustery Saturday evenings made better by tasty homemade soup and local Uprise Bakery bread this winter.

Anywho...

The local booty legend:
no asterisk = grocery store
+ = The Root Cellar
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden
**** = the non-profit buying club, Blue Planet or Purcell Mountain Farms















You know, soup is flippin' hard to get a good picture of. Especially light colored soups!

"Cheesy" Delicata Squash and Potato Soup
1 delicata squash, halved with seeds and stringy parts discarded *
2 large carola (or yukon gold) potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks *
1 leek, sliced (white parts only) *
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped *
1 tbsp safflower oil
1 cup plain hempmilk
1 cup water
4 tbsp nutritional yeast (nooch)
1-2 tsp ground mustard
1 tbsp shoyu (or other soy sauce)
a couple of dashes of dried basil
black pepper
salt

Preheat oven to 400.

Spray delicata halves with safflower or other oil spray.

Place cut side up in a baking dish. Roast for 40-50 minutes or until really soft. Let cool.

Meanwhile, heat a medium pot of water on the stove top. Add the potatoes and simmer until soft, about 30 minutes. Drain water.

Heat safflower oil in a small skillet. Add the leeks and garlic and cook for about 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently.

Scoop delicata flesh into a food processor. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until really smooth.

Return to the stove and simmer for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Serve with warm, crusty bread!

Oh my goodness, I never thought soup could be this good.

'Til next time.

Queso-menos Quesadillas con las habas de Anasazi y la calabaza de Delicata (Cheese-less Quesadillas with Anasazi Beans and Delicata Squash)

Update: Veggie Girl flippin' rocks and she helped me get the translation right. Thanks Veggie Girl!

Anyways, this recipe is dedicated to Katrina from Kale for Sale for giving me the idea of expanding my horizons and mashing up roasted squash for use in Mexican food. It was an awesome suggestion and we'll be doing it often now. So thanks Katrina, this one is for you!

This was also the first time we had tried delicata squash. There is only one purveyor at the farmer's market who sells these too. I had noticed them when I bought a huge bag of organic red potatoes from the vendor the previous week. We asked him about the delicata and his awesome array of acorn squash, but didn't purchase any - until last Saturday of course. After enjoying the delicata squash as much as we did, we're hoping to clean out the remaining ones he has (along with a few of his gorgeous acorn squash) Saturday at the market. Wahoo for storing local booty for winter.

Between the 11 butternut squash we got from our community garden, the delicata, acorn, and spaghetti squash we hope to obtain, we are going to turn in to squash! During the summer, we are loaded down with zucchini, yellow summer squash, and eggplant (not squash, but similar in taste in my opinion), and over the winter - well, it's all winter squash. I guess it is a good thing that squash are versatile and we like them, otherwise eating locally might be pretty crummy!

An FYI if you've never had delicata squash: apparently it is considered as a quasi-heirloom variety. It is also referred to as "Sweet Potato Squash" and "Bohemian Squash", not sure about the Bohemian one, but the Sweet Potato name fits. The squash has an orange flesh similar to butternuts. They are moist and very sweet, much like....you guessed it, a sweet potato. The skins on delicatas are also edible, though we scooped the flesh out and discarded the skin for this recipe. I tried a piece with the skin after I had roasted the squash and it was quite edible.

This is a really simple recipe, the only time consuming part is roasting the squash. If you have your beans made ahead of time (which I always do because Brett flippin' rocks hardcore), then you can use the squash roasting time to prepare everything else and have a meal from oven to table in about 45 minutes.

Anywho, I've rambled long enough, let's get on to the food!

Just a reminder of the produce legend:
no asterisk = grocery store
* = farmer's market
** = CSA
*** = Container or Community Garden















Queso-menos Quesadillas con las habas de Anasazi y la calabaza de Delicata
1 delicata squash, stem removed and halved *
1 tbsp safflower oil
salt
pepper
2 cups Anasazi beans, cooked
1 cup of white button mushrooms, minced
2 serrano peppers, seeded and minced *
1 hot banana pepper, seeded and minced ***
1 green bell pepper, seeded and minced **
1 small yellow onion, minced **
4 cloves of garlic, minced *
chili powder
ground coriander
cumin
salt

tortillas
spicy salsa

Preheat oven to 450.

On a baking sheet, rub safflower oil into the flesh of the squash (the squash should be roasted with the skin side down). Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake for 35-45 minutes or until squash is soft.

Let cool for a few minutes. Then scoop flesh out of the skin and mash in a bowl. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat a few tablespoons of water in a medium skillet.

Add the mushrooms, peppers, garlic, and onions. Cook for 10-15 minutes or until veggies are to your desired "doneness". Drain any excess water.

Add the beans and seasonings and heat through.

Layer squash and bean mixture in warmed tortillas. Fry if desired.

Serve with some really spicy salsa.

I can't remember what brand it is, but Brett and I recently came across a really yummy hot salsa that comes from Texas. It has pureed hot New Mexican Chile peppers, jalapenos, and chipotle peppers in it. It is very good for salsa out of a jar.

That reminds me, I need to see what kind of salsa the locals sell at the market this weekend!

I should be back sometime this week with a post about our (vegetarian) Huevos Rancheros - they are seriously awesome, and then the first of my two installments of Monthly Unplug Yourself wrap ups. There are going to be two for the sake of my not writing a novel for you guys to read all at once. The first post will be a round-up of other participants' posts on the initiative as well as on my beginners understanding of Permaculture - having read the book Permaculture and now working on David Holmgren's Collected Writings. I hope that my knowledge of the topic will continue to improve. The second post will be about the alternative (non-mainstream) news sources I read, with links and brief descriptions of each. Now, most of them are liberal, some so liberal they are almost back around to the right again, but I do have a few conservative news sources I read for good measure. Oh, and also if I need a little increase in blood pressure. ;-)

Brett should be posting sometime soon as well as to his progress with the Unplug Yourself initiative, and he will also be posting the monthly "call to arms" for the initiative as well. I think we've worked a lot of the "kinks" out, so hopefully the aim, purpose, and commitment will be much clearer. A big thanks to everyone who has joined - we hope you have enjoyed the experience (or at least learned something) and will consider continuing on. Others, please think about signing up to participate - this is a group effort and the more heads that come together and figure out how to live better with less, expand our horizons, and live by our morals and priciples - the better this planet will be.

'Til next time.