Fuel

SEPTA is on strike, so I'm riding my bike to work. It's 40 degrees... real-feel: 38... real-feel on a moving bicycle: god damn cold. So I had a bowl of hot oat bran with molasses and flaxseed, for fuel.

I'll have a cold ride home in the dark to look forward to, so for lunch, I'm bringing a Thermos full of potato-leek soup (extra rosemary makes it seem warmer to me), with a side of red beans with lemon-pepper (the pepper is super-hot). And a couple slices of multi-grain bread for toast right about tea-time.

Here we go!

Nor'easter weekend baked butternut with apple.

It looks a little like certain varieties of dulcimer. I could call it an Apple Dulcimer. At the end, I mush it up, though.

This is a butternut squash from the market this morning, stuffed with apple (I don't know if the apple is an Autumn Crisp or an Empire, I didn't keep them separated).

I cut it (carefully) in half, with my tiny knife. I need to buy a larger knife for baked squash season. Cut the squash in half, scoop out the seeds and pulp.

This pretty butternut squash is a good source of calcium and various vitamins. It doesn't even seem to know that, the dear little thing. It smells like a pumpkin.

After you scoop out the seeds and pulp, you're going to fill the empty bowls with apple, drizzle with olive oil & molasses and sprinkle with cinnamon & brown sugar.

You've been pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees. You're going to cover the two squash halves with aluminum foil or something and bake them for about an hour. Do something else while they bake, they'll remind you they're baking by filling your home with a wonderful, pumpkin-pie smell.


That's the squash before it goes into the oven. When a fork slides into it like it's butter, the squash is finished baking.

I added a little more molasses and brown sugar to mine, mashed up the squash and mixed the apple in with it. You could also eat it as shown at the top of this post, as a baked squash with a side of baked apple. Mine tasted like pumpkin pie with hints of apple pie.

Season's Last Local Peach, and What I Did With It

You've read here about Quinoa Soup, and about NASA's consideration of quinoa.

Here are two more things you can do with quinoa.

One of them tastes like pizza. The other is crumbly, peachy, and sweet, like cobbler.

Mark made the first one this afternoon.

You know how to cook rice, right? Two parts water, one part rice, a dash of salt, bring to a boil on the stovetop, reduce heat and simmer until it's done. To cook quinoa, do the same thing and simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Before cooking, rinse the quinoa grains with cool water and drain.

For the above quinoa pilaf, add to the quinoa and water on the stove some diced onion, chopped broccoli, and mushroom. Add the vegetables at the beginning, bring them to a boil right along with the grain, simmer everything together.

When it's done, the quinoa is soft and translucent and you can see the white curl of the germ along the outside of the grain. The water should all be absorbed. If there is excess and you don't want it, it can be drained.

While the dish is hot, add diced tomatoes and stir them in. The hot pilaf will heat them and give them the taste of stewed tomatoes.

Season with oregano, basil would be great (we don't have any), salt, and some raw chopped onions, sprinkle with oil and vinegar. With the hot tomatoes, onion and oregano, the finished, seasoned dish has a taste similar to pizza or spaghetti. (Damn, basil would be perfect!) Could serve with garlic toast.

I had a little of that this afternoon, but I was full from a plate of potatoes, okra & tomatoes, and green beans, and just had a taste of the pilaf so I could report on it. Thanks to Mark for being patient while I photographed his food before he ate it. I'm looking forward to trying this one myself.

Now, here's something I did with quinoa later in the evening. It was so dreamy I can't believe I made it myself at my house.

I started by cooking some quinoa for cereal, planning to have it with molasses and brown sugar (which I finally bought). Two parts water, one part quinoa, bring to a boil, reduce heat, simmer for 10-15 minutes or until grain is translucent and soft and you can see the germ along the outside.

Remove from heat and mix in about a tablespoon of molasses (10% of your "recommended" daily calcium, iron, and vitamin A). Add cinnamon and stir it in.

Then I had an idea.

I diced the last peach of the season. Left over from last Saturday, and the peach lady said then that that was the last week they would be bringing peaches. I ate several slivers of it raw and heated the rest in oil. Poured it over the hot quinoa cereal and sprinkled with flax seed and brown sugar.




This dish tastes like peach cobbler. I didn't stir in the brown sugar, just sprinkled it on top and left it in clumps of crystals along with the flax seed, much like a crumbly cobbler topping.

There may be frozen peaches or peaches from a grocery store later, but this is likely the last local peach of the season.

That's the way to do it.

Progressive Pumpkin Baked Squash

Ambercup Squash. Is what this is called, as I understand it.

So that no one else falls prey to not knowing about the Ambercup Squash (or pumpkin-like squash, as I've come to call it), here is a little guide to squash, which I found helpful. If you scroll down and look on the right, you'll see a picture of the little darling you see here to the left.

What we've done with it is we've cut it in two, with a puny little knife, which is what we have right now, so it looks a little hacked, but that shows the texture off better in a later picture, so that's OK. Cut it with a big, sharp knife if you have one (don't hurt yourself, for crying out loud), because it was really hard cutting it with the little one. Anyway. You don't put the apples in right away.

Just set those apples aside for now. You're going to fill the bowl of the squash with a little olive oil, molasses, and cinnamon (brown sugar, if you have that, I'm delaying going to the grocery store, so I am currently out).

Save the seeds and pulpy stuff. You can boil them down for stock for a light, squash-flavored soup (good with quinoa or rice, and corn). Nope. Seemed like a good idea, but it didn't work. We tried boiling these down as soup stock, it started stinking to high heaven, I thought the sink drain was backed up. I have no idea why that would happen. I'll have to look into this. (update, 10/8/09, 11:20 p.m.)


Cover each half with aluminum foil and bake at 350 for about half an hour. Then you're going to take it out, fill the bowls with the diced apples, drizzle with a bit more oil, molasses, sprinkle with whatever you like, whatever you have, cover it back up and bake for about another 30-40 minutes.


When a fork goes in smoothly and easily, it's done, eat it.

You've probably noticed that I talk about molasses a lot. That's because a.) it's a smoky sweet acquired taste that I have soundly acquired and b.) two tablespoons of it contains 20% of my "recommended daily value" of iron, of calcium, and of vitamin A. I don't even know what vitamin A does, but I'll take it. I know what iron and calcium do, those are good, at least plant-sources of them are good.

Keeping your bones strong depends more on preventing the loss of calcium from your body than on boosting your calcium intake.

Some cultures consume few or no dairy products and typically ingest fewer than 500 milligrams of calcium per day. However, these people generally have low rates of osteoporosis. Many scientists believe that exercise and other factors have more to do with osteoporosis than calcium intake does.

Use molasses liberally. (Progressively, even.)

Molasses, quinoa, calcium, outer space

Just had a bedtime snack, an English muffin, toasted, with molasses, and some grapes (only fruit in the house, it's almost shopping day). The label says molasses has 20% of your recommended daily value, whatever that means, of iron. Twenty percent of your recommended daily vitamin A, and 20% of your calcium. Hmm.

Made a rare trip to the grocery store after work. Bought something expensive I'd been thinking about all day. Quinoa is $3.99 for a 16 oz. package. We searched it online, it only goes up from there. Does anyone know where to get this cheaper? (She said, as though people were already hanging out here reading.) But I want to try it. You prepare it like white rice, but it's heartier than rice. Got cheap balsamic, $2.29 for a glass bottle that will last us a couple of months. The English muffins, splurged on some soy sausage, got soap for the shower, flax seed meal, I feel like I'm forgetting something. Spent around $15 altogether. I usually go to the grocery store about once a month for oat bran, flax seed, and tea. Coffee comes in cans from Fu-Wah. Yesterday at Fu-Wah we picked up a package of pastry wraps and that's why we couldn't resist the soy sausage. Oh, we're gonna stuff something and cook it.

Quinoa is a wonderful food:

Quinoa was of great nutritional importance in pre-Columbian Andean civilizations, being secondary only to the potato, and was followed in importance by maize. In contemporary times, this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthful choice for vegetarians and vegans. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source.[4] It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned spaceflights.[4]

I would like for it to be cheaper. But I can already eat on $80/month if need be. Depending on the outcome of this weekend's festivities, quinoa might get its own line item. We have a birthday in the family this weekend, and a cat adoptiversary, and a new Michael Moore movie (Capitalism: A Love Story). Cool weather and cooking. And blogging.