Welcome back to recipe of the week! It’s been a whirlwind month so we’ve been all over the place with recipes. Tonight’s recipe comes to you courtesy of our refrigerator and my mind. The real inspiration is my friend Jessica who send me a recipe for squash lasagna, which sounds delicious but would have required a trip to the grocery store. Instead, we had this little dish. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. Since it’s a recipe from my mind rather than a recipe card or a cook book, the amounts are approximate. Good luck!

1 Danish (Acorn) Squash, cut into wedges
2 Onions, cut into wedges
Rosemary (we had two four inch springs of fresh rosemary, maybe a tablespoon total after I stripped it from the stem)
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper
Asiago Cheese (if you don’t have asiago, parmesaen would be just fine)
Spaghetti

Preheat the oven to 375, line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil.
Put the squash, onion and rosemary in a bowl and give it a splash of olive oil to lightly coat the pieces. You don’t want too much oil, but you do want the pieces to roast nicely without sticking.
Spread the mixture onto the cookie sheet and place in the oven.
Roast for 15 minutes, then flip the contents of the sheet, roast another 15 to 20 minutes until the squash is soft.
Boil a pot of water and cook up your spaghetti. I used about half an inch of spaghetti, but this amount is up to you.
Once the squash is all finished in the oven, allow it to cool a bit, then cut the flesh from the rind and place in a bowl with the onion and rosemary. Give the contents of the bowl a nice hearty dose of freshly cracked pepper and a bit of salt.
Drain the pasta and return to the pot; add contents of the bowl and mix them nicely.
Dump everything back into the bowl and add a healthy amount of cheese.
Enjoy!
We ate this on it’s own as our whole supper, primarily because we had a late lunch and we still have some leftover Christmas goodies for dessert.

If you’ve been around us for long, you probably already know that I kind of have a thing for Heidi Swanson. I’m a fan. In fact, I like her recipes so much, that I seriously considered begging Jonathan to try to find the places she mentions in her blog while we were in California in September.  It was not to be, which is probably better. Nobody wants to be the crazy person wandering around town. I’ve been using 101 cookbooks as a source for recipes for awhile and generally enjoy everything we make from the site. I often make substitutions for the tofu that is present in the recipes, but what I really like is that Heidi writes many vegetarian recipes that do not include soy/seitan.  I got hold of a copy of her cookbook and read every recipe. She has great photos and clearly explains everything for the beginner setting up a natural/whole foods kitchen. I like that she often uses legumes and they are cheap. Admittedly, my versions of things turn out a little different. This is likely due to the fact that when Heidi says “high quality beans” she does not mean Hy-top brand from Winco, but hey, the overall result is similar and almost always delicious!

Giant Crusty and Creamy White Beans as adapted from Super Natural Cooking

1/2lb medium or large dried white beans (ours were giant limas)
Butter
Sea Salt
1 onion, coarsely chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1.5 cups frozen chard (I guessed this as I did not have fresh, the original recipe calls for 6 or 7 big leaves, cut into wide ribbons)
Olive Oil
Bread Crumbs
Feta (I think we maybe had 1/4 cup?)

Soak the beans overnight or use the quick soak method (I did not use either method. I do this crazy thing where I boil water in our electric kettle, then pour that over the beans and let them soak for four hours. It’s like a combo method. Feel free to do that too.)

Cook the beans according to package directions. For the giant limas, this was pour off the water in which the beans were soaked, rinse, place into a pot and add more water, bring to a boil then turn down to simmer for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Drain the cooked beans.

Melt some butter or olive oil in the largest skillet you have over medium heat  (maybe a tablespoon? Heidi’s original recipe called for 3T clarified butter. If you’ve got time to make clarified butter, great! If not, just plop some butter in the pan and swirl it around so the pan is coated).

Add the beans until you have one full layer in the pan and heat them for three or four minutes until they’re nice and brown. Flip the beans and do the same on the second side.

Add the onion and garlic, cook till soft, probably another five minutes.

Add the chard and cook till heated (if you’re using fresh chard, just cook till wilted).

Remove from heat. Add the contents of the pan to an au gratin dish or baking dish of some sort. Top with bread crumbs, a drizzle of olive oil and feta. Set under the broiler until the top is nice and toasty. Serve immediately.

The original recipe says it serves six to eight as a side dish. We generally make it three to four main servings.

We’ve got a new regular feature at oatmealforbreakfast.com! The recipe of the week. This is Jonathan’s GREAT idea and will be a combined effort of his photography and my cooking. This will not appear on any regular day mind you, because well, I just can’t be counted on for things like that, but a once a week recipe that maybe you’ll like or it will be a story of how I destroyed some otherwise good food that may entertain you.

Stuffed Squash is the combination of two recipes and a little of my own creativity/what we had in the fridge. It started here andhere with the official published recipes and ended up with something pretty good.

The recipe:
2 squash (we had one delicatta honeyboat and one acorn squash, just make sure they’re about the same size)
2 shallots, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 red onion, minced
2 T butter
3/4 C Trader Joe’s wild rice blend (you could probably use rice a roni or something similar, just do not add the seasoning packet)
1 C vegetable stock
3/4 C water
A handful of dried cherries
A handful of chopped walnuts
1 and 1/2 C chopped kale
A few hearty shakes of salt and pepper
1/2 t of dried sage

Preheat the oven at 400 degrees.
Wash off the squash really well,cut in half and scoop out the seeds.
Set them cut-side down on a rimmed baking sheet and roast for 45 minutes. The flesh should be nice and soft, but you want the outside to still hold up well enough to be your bowl of goodness.
Let the squash cool while you prep the rest of the ingredients. (I actually put the squash in the oven, went to the grocery store and had J get them out so they were nice and cool when I was ready to scoop them clean. I was burned by hot squash earlier in the week and my fingers were still a little tender.)

Put a medium saucepan/pot on the stove. One for which you’ve got a nice-fitting lid. If you don’t have a tight-fitting lid, use a plate. It’ll do, I promise.
Plop in the butter and melt it on medium until it’s all nice and bubbly.
Add the garlic, shallot and onion. Cook for three minutes or until they’re nice and soft.
Add the wild rice mixture and get that nice and toasty, depending on the size of the bottom of your pan and your liking, this could be anywhere between one and three minutes. I did it for three minutes.
Add the vegetable stock and water and mix well.
Bring it back to a boil, then reduce the heat to low. Cover with your lid and cook for 30 minutes. DO NOT REMOVE THE LID. I am very bad at this step, so please do what I say and not what I do. I’m very nervous around rice. I can’t tell when it’s done because rice doesn’t ever smell done to me.
While the rice is cooking, scoop out your squash and put that in a bowl with the dried cherries, nuts and kale and give it a good mix so the squash isn’t lumpy.
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Once your rice mixture is ready, add that to the bowl of other goodies and mix it really well so the squash is nice and smooth and everything else is well-distributed.
Stuff your squash shells with the mixture and place them back on your baking sheet.
Bake at 375 for 10 to 15 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the top is nice and brown.

The verdict: these were very good! Our friends Carrie and Dan were our willing taste-testers and they said they enjoyed them. In the future I’d skip the step where I leave the house while the squash is roasting so they could be a little softer and I’d really try harder to avoid removing the lid of the pot so the rice was better cooked, but all in all these were good. They were great leftover and it was an excellent use of two squash and some kale we happened to have.

If you try this one, let me know what you think!