No drawing today — no time with this deadline.  But I did cook something yummy!

Growing up in Southern California we didn’t eat winter squash —
I don’t remember seeing it in the markets, and if it had been around my mom, who was an adventuress cook, would have tried it.  I think she was able to do this even more with me, because my brothers may have been picky eaters.  I would try anything.

When I moved to Southern Oregon I fell in love with Butternut — so sweet —
I often made them like mashed potatoes.  Then I branched out to the other strange winter squashes — and found they are wonderful STUFFED.

Last night a large 8″ squash was opened up, the seeds were scooped out (we baked those as we feed the birds with them) and they were turned upside down in a pan of water and cooked at 350 degrees for 40 minutes (watch them, it could be more or less).

We had leftover quinqoa.  Mitchell cooked up some wild rice for me earlier in the day, and I have plenty frozen to use in three more meals.

While waiting, separately I chopped up:

• half a huge onion,
• the meat from two leftover chicken legs,
• and one roasted sugar chili (see drawing of Westwind’s roasting setup at the PSU market from 2017).

I placed it in a hot skillet where I also used the small amount of gelled chicken juice with some fat left on it (you could substitute olive oil), and seasoned it with cumin, pepper, garlic salt, and as we like it hot, added chili pepper flakes.  (It should be a tiny bit saltier to the taste because it will be eaten with the squash, which has no season in it.)  When it was exactly as I wanted it — not overcooked but the onions were not raw — I tossed in about 1 1/2 cups of quinqoa and the same amount of wild rice.  This was stirred over the heat just enough to make it all hot again.

The squash were ready, we turned them over onto our plates, and placed the stuffing into the squash — and it overflowed as there was enough for two squash.  We ate it with spoons, digging down into the squash with each bit of stuffing.  YUM!