Food - Name Your Poison

[Zinjanthropos]

My mom's are so good we once thought of offering franchises. Never seen a fast food outlet that serves perogies. I'd go for sure. Not even many restaurants. When you do it's kind of like ordering spaghetti, rarely if ever the same as the way you like it at home. Congrats to anyone who actually has found such an establishment.

[elte]

I mentioned a favorite of mine is natural peanut butter with mild raw turnip greens.  However I got a recent suggestion that such peanut butter goes well with apples, and after trying it to confirm intuition that it is true, it definitely held true.  Then I noticed that the local grocery store produce section had shelled walnuts within a display of apples.  Apparently the taste researchers there have a not unrelated idea.

[scheherazade]

I was harvesting my parsley and basil the other day and made a batch of walnut parsley pesto incorporating the herbs as well as some arugula. I used olive oil, garlic and a very aged cheddar cheese as I had no Parmesan in the house. The resulting pesto made a great garnish for cooked potato as well as an awesome dip for some organic corn chips. Simple ingredients, easy to make, easy to clean up and very yummy. My kind of food prep.

[elte]

Indeed, yum yum !!

[scheherazade]

Mushrooms are one of those foods that I occasionally get a craving for, despite them basically not having a lot of nutritional value save for several micro-nutrients.
Once before, I made steak fried Portobello mushrooms and they were very good. I will be watching for them to go on sale and give the recipe another go soon.

For anyone else who might be interested, here is a link to a good basic recipe which includes a video tutorial.

http://www.marthastewart.com/349148/gril...oom-steaks

[scheherazade]

Hard shell squash were on sale over the Thanksgiving weekend and I picked up two Spaghetti squash, my favorite variety of this vegetable. They were the largest ones that I have seen, at 5 lbs each, and today I had a wrestling match in the kitchen to subdue one of them and get it prepped for cooking. Into the microwave for a minute and a half to make it a bit easier to render in half with a large knife, then scoop out the seeds and quarter the beast to get it to fit into the largest enameled cast iron pot that I own. Add some boiling water, on with the lid and into the oven to moist bake until it is done. Four meals of squash made ahead and tomorrow, I will make some fresh salsa for a topping. Reheat a serving of squash with a bit of butter and top with fresh salsa....drool, drool....

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[Leigha]

I've never added salsa to squash, sounds yummy!

[scheherazade]

Pumpkin is my latest discovery and I cannot imagine why I have never cooked one except that my family never did so I think much of our food choices stem from what we have been exposed to earlier. I have used the canned vegetable to make pies and smoothies but it did not inspire me to learn more.

In conversation with a friend, she shared how much she enjoyed this seasonal vegetable and when pumpkins went on sale the next day, I grabbed two small ones and cooked the first one in the same manner as any other squash, cut with seeds removed and baked in a medium oven. Once baked, the flesh can be scooped, scraped or sliced out and used in many recipes. Pumpkin crisp is heavenly as it is basically pumpkin pie filling without the pastry and with a tasty topping of oats, nuts, sugar and butter as a topping. Pumpkin pancakes are gluten free and amazingly filling for such a light and delicate texture. There are countless pumpkin recipes to explore and now that I have discovered that fresh pumpkin is so much tastier than the canned version, I look forward to exploring the possibilities.

[elte]

I include the seeds of the squash and pumpkin when I cook them, and eat them, too.  I try to eat each seed individually.

[cosmictraveler]

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