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 BurritosHoney 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!
