Food In Many Forms

I couldn't keep up with the weekly posts, but this week seemed like a good week to get back into it. I had winter squash accumulated from multiple weeks - butternut squash, acorn squash, delicata squash, and 2 different types of pumpkin - and I just got a new Blendtec blender, so it seemed good timing to do a squash soup. I halved the pumpkin, delicata and acorn squash and roasted them in the oven at 350 degrees, taking them out one-by-one as they softened up.  All my blanching and freezing these past few months paid off when I had celery and onions, but not carrots. Luckily, I had carrots from August all sliced up in my freezer. I sauteed them in a stockpot with olive oil, until they just started to caramelize.  In the blender, I put 2 cups of chicken broth, the squash, and 1-2 cups of mirepoix. The squash was still hot from the oven, and after 90 seconds of blending it was ready to eat! It was surprisingly sweet, so I may have to add a little cayenne pepper or something to g...

These delicious stuffed squashes made a nice accessory to our pre-finals dinner of turkey, dressing, cooked kale and multitudes of baked goods. And did I mention they're gluten-free? Ingredients: 4 small acorn squash 1 1/2 lbs of sage bulk sausage, crumbled 1 cup onion, diced 2 stalks celery, diced 2 Granny Smith apples, cubed Non-stick cooking spray Fresh black pepper Directions: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and coat a shallow baking pan with nonstick spray. Trim a thin slice from both ends of each acorn squash, then cut them in half crosswise and scoop out the seeds. Place the squash, cut side down on the prepared baking sheet and bake until very tender when pierced with the tip of a knife, 30 to 35 minutes. Turn the squash halves cut side up and spray with nonstick cooking spray. While the squash bakes, saute the sausage over medium heat, breaking it up with a spatula as finely as possible as it cooks. Once the sausage is cooked through, transfer it to pap...

As a future dietitian, I should know better. I know which fats are the "healthy" kind and which ones to avoid.  But I love my sausage, be it at breakfast or dinner, be it in patty form or bulk, be it Italian or Andouille. In this case the good outweighs the bad . And I can prove it. (If you trust me already, skip to the bottom for a delicious recipe; if you want my evidence, read on.) I just learned about this great new tool called the Super Tracker . It is part of the government's MyPlate campaign , and it tracks just about anything you could want. In this case, I wanted to know how many servings of vegetables  I am getting. The Super Tracker tells me that one half a squash has 1 cup of vegetables (40% of my Daily Value) , and 1 1/2 oz protein (27% of my Daily Value). (The other 1/2 oz sausage per serving contributes to my discretionary calories due to the fat content.) In my opinion, for the average healthy person can handle a little fat from a natural, mini...