Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook! So glad you’ve joined me!
Today I’m continuing my series on home-keeping. Home-keeping is the art of making a house into a home and with Halloween looming large next week, my thoughts have inevitably turned to what else, but the Super Bowl of cooking holidays: Thanksgiving. And what more quintessentially home-kept holiday can there be but Thanksgiving? Thinking about Thanksgiving makes my heart quiver with anticipation. I love everything about it (well..except for the baggage associated with it…or any holiday, for that matter) and I have participated in the preparation of food and decorations for almost as long as I can remember.
Even when I was just a little girl and too young to actually cook anything, my sister and I used to beg my mother for little scraps of raw pie dough and drops of pumpkin pie filling. I had a doll house that was kitted out with a pretty great kitchen with doll-sized appliances and copper–yes, copper–cookware. Those bitches had better equipment than I have (and just like that–bam! baggage!) Anyway, my sister and I would press the dough into the copper pans and then fill them with drops of pumpkin pie filling. Mom would carefully prop the thimble-sized masterpieces into the oven racks and we would drag chairs up to the warm embrace of the oven and watch as the tiny pies baked and turned golden brown. They would then adorn the dolls’ dining table while we gobbled up the human-sized turkey, dressing, pies and cookies.
Since those halcyon days of my childhood, I have cooked Thanksgiving dinner on my own well more than 30 times. Mostly, I use my mom’s recipes for the turkey, dressing, three-bean salad, spinach casserole and pumpkin pie. Also, it’s the only time of the year that I have jell-o and I have a great jell-o salad recipe that I’ll share when Thanksgiving gets a little closer. I also always make my famous pecan pie–another recipe I’ll be sharing when we get closer to the holiday.
While I think I could make Thanksgiving dinner in my sleep because I’ve done it so many times, it is a lot of work–especially if you’re making food for a crowd. But–there are tips and tricks to making it a lot easier, and I’ll be publishing a series of Thanksgiving tips and tricks posts starting a couple of weeks before the big day.
For now, though, I thought I’d do a little experimenting with recipes–some new, some tried and true–that may become new Thanksgiving traditions for me, starting with honeynut squash and butternut squash, which I don’t work with a lot: Butternut, and its closely related cousin honeynut squash, are delicious vegetables that are abundant in the fall, along with other heartier gourds, such as pumpkins, acorn and spaghetti squash. And it turns out that butternut and honeynut squash, with their high levels of beta carotene and other nutrients, are super good for you–so good that they’re considered to be “superfoods.”
Butternut and honeynut squash have no fat and lots of fiber, so they’re good for stabilizing blood pressure. A serving has lots of vitamin A, vitamin C, magnesium, potassium (which is also good for your blood pressure) and even has some calcium. They can help boost your immune system and reduce inflammation.
Now…what we do with our vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner purposes can reduce the health benefits of any perfectly good vegetable (I refer to them as “vegetables in name only;-), but I wanted to present the case for these delightful squashes, treatment of them notwithstanding.
Suffice it to say, the less you do to a vegetable, the better it is for you because you retain all those good vitamins that may be sensitive to heat, cold or light. My posts will focus on how to reduce the stress and workload of prep work by working smarter. I’ll post a variety of recipes featuring butternut and honeynut squash–some will be healthier than others. After all…this is food with Thanksgiving in mind, so…
The first, and by far the easiest, way I’m going to share is roasting the squash. Here, I’m using the delightfully smaller cousin of butternut squash, honeynut squash, but you can use this method for either:
Simply split them in half (this is more easily accomplished by microwaving them for about a minute), sprinkle them generously with salt, drizzle with a little pecan or olive oil (nut oil is particularly delicious with the yummy fall flavors!), add a little brown sugar or maple syrup and butter. If you’re a fan of pumpkin pie spice, this is a great time to break it out–sprinkle a little on them for a deliciously rich flavor of fall! Roast for about an hour at 350*, or until fork-tender and serve for all-of-fall in a bite!
Join me next week when I make butternut squash soup and butternut squash ravioli–
Until then,
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
