When I was a kid, my name for squash was “so-so”, because that’s how I ranked it among all the vegetables my parents made me eat. Carrots were my absolute fave, mushrooms were (and still are) the most disgusting food ever, and squash was just, well…so-so. It was never something I’d request for dinner, but if my parents pushed me to eat it, I’d manage to get it down without too much complaining. Even better if there was some brown sugar baked into it.
But as often happens when one’s personality matures, my tastes matured, too. I’ve actually grown to really like squash, but although I find it tasty, I don’t tend to buy it very often because I just don’t know what to do with it at home. Plus, it’s a pain in the butt to cut up.
But then I made two recipes featuring ingredients from my first CSA bag, and two of them included squash (although one was a bit of cheat…but more on that in a moment)!
First up was blogger Smitten Kitchen‘s spaghetti squash tacos recipe from her cookbook, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. My former roommate Jen and I had made this recipe last year but I’d completely forgotten about it until I stared down my spaghetti squash. It’s really the perfect vegetarian taco. The squash is roasted, broken down and beautifully spiced with cumin, coriander, chili powder, and lime juice, and then topped with black beans, your favourite cheese (the recipe calls for queso fresco, but I used yummy goat’s feta from Crosswind Farm, purchased at my local West End Food Co-op), and some red or green onions. Yum! I easily gobbled up four of these suckers on some beautiful corn tortillas. Whether you’re a vegetarian, you need to feed a vegetarian friend, or you just want to eat meatless now and then, this recipe is easy and super delicious.
Next up was a delicious carrot pumpkin soup that I cooked up on the weekend. (I followed the recipe pretty closely on this one, except that instead of curry powder I put in a healthy dose of ground nutmeg and freshly grated ginger.) I decided to make this soup because I still had a bunch of carrots from my CSA bag…and I had half of a can of pumpkin to finish up after making gluten-free pumpkin chocolate chip muffins and pumpkin French toast earlier in the week. Yes, I said canned pumpkin. While I’m definitely trying to eat more local fruits and veggies, I’ll admit that sometimes I’m still taking the easy way out. I’m sure canned pumpkin doesn’t taste as amazing as a freshly roasted one, but sometimes you just have to work within your limitations, whether you’re restricted by what’s in your pantry or how much time you have. Eating local is a big shift and I don’t expect myself to be perfect at it all the time…or maybe not even half of the time! But bit by bit I’m working on adding more local food to my diet.
Have you been cooking with local food lately? Share your favourite new recipe in the comments!