Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Soup

This one is so easy that when I made it, I totally forgot to post about it. It's rich and creamy and delicious.

1 1.5-lb butternut squash, cubed
1 large sweet potato
small onion, chopped
some garlic, chopped
some olive oil and butter
6 cups vegetable or chicken broth
S+P

Sweat your onion and garlic in oil and butter until tender and add squash and potato. Liberally salt and pepper. Let the vegetables hang out for 10 minutes or so and then add your broth. Cook until everything is soft. With your immersion blender or food processor, puree soup until silky. Next time, I'd add some ginger or some rosemary at the beginning (not to be pureed, though). Yummm.

Turkey Quinoa Meatloaf

Adapted from this recipe but completely different because I'm genius, haha. Ha.

I looove quinoa! Like I said, it's an awesome vehicle for whatever ingredients you have on hand and it has an amazing texture. Plus, it's filling and nutritious! Honestly, I'm making this meatloaf again but probably with totally different ingredients, ie. whatever I have in the frig like tonight. I also think that you can tell I'm not into measuring savory ingredients: use whatever you have and like. If you don't have fresh spices, use dried. If you don't have spices, don't use them. You get the idea. Like a quiche, a meatloaf is a basic dish that carries whatever you put in it. So, the ingredients are, shall we say, flexible. And freezable! You can make this loaf and freeze it for when you have a baby on the way and can't worry about dinner for, like, 3 months.

"Menu" Week of January 17, 2011

Oh, man, haven't done one of these posts in a while because the holidays sapped me of organization! And this menu will actually be very simple: only one new recipe because I want life to be simple as it can be. Maternity leave starts in a month. YIKES.

Sunday: Roast Chicken, Brown Rice, Beet Salad

Monday: Chicken tacos, Refried or Black beans, Kale

Tuesday: Turkey Quinoa Meatloaf and Brussel Sprouts

Wednesday: Puttenesca Pasta

Thursday: Shrimp Scampi

Friday: Pizza or Quiche, something

Stuffed Mushrooms

I really, really need to remember to take pictures! Because these turned out beautifully.

Stuffed Mushrooms

Bread
Parsley
Cheese (whatever you have on hand, I had cave-aged Gruyère)
Onion
Garlic
Olive oil
S+P
Mushrooms

Preheat oven to 350. Pop off the caps from the stems of your mushrooms and save stems for another dish (I threw it in my quinoa). In your food processor, combine all your other ingredients and chop to combine. Fill each mushroom cap. Lightly grease the bottom of a baking dish and bake for 20 minutes or until mushrooms start to get juicy. Yummm!

Quinoa

Oh, hey, so a new discovery: quinoa is FANTASTIC and as easy to cook as couscous and almost just as fast. Like couscous, it can serve as a pretty awesome vehicle for whatever you want to put in it and, if you're not careful, you could end up making way too much. Like, enough for 6 people even though you only used a cup and half! Unlike couscous, you have to be careful to read the packaging because it might need to be rinsed until the water runs clear or taste like poop. The package I bought was pre-rinsed so, lucky me, I only dirtied one colander and wasted a half minute rinsing it before I read the packaging.

When it's cooked, this small grain is fluffy and nutty and, oddly enough, a relative to spinach. Anyway, it's delicious. I'm excited for it because it seems like I could throw in whatever I have lurking in the frig and, 12 minutes later, dinner is served. A one pot meal, my favorite! Here's what I threw in last night adapted however slightly from this recipe. 

Whole Lemon Pie with Walnut-Cranberry Crumble

Filling from Smitten Kitchen 

I had never heard of Shaker Lemon Pie until yesterday when I went searching for a way to use lemons that had gone soft over the holidays in my refrigerator and a par-baked crust in the freezer that really needed to be used. Not that it would have gone bad in the freezer but just...what kind of lunatic sits on a homemade pie crust? So, anyway, there are a kajillion recipes for this kind of pie that I had never heard of before and they are all easy. Well, it would have been super easy if I had had hot water in the house to wash all the dishes before I got started and if my sink wasn't backed up from all the rain. But, still, a great pie got made and that's all that counts; it doesn't even matter that my husband thinks I'm a loon for baking in a basically unusable kitchen. It is (was) a great pie.