CSA Week 14: Return of the squash!

Y’all, I am so so happy about this week’s bunch of goodness, because we finally got a winter squash! A gorgeous, perfectly sized butternut, and it thrilled me no end to realize that I could finally make risotto! I made that exact risotto (adding a few of Week 13’s red onions), and it came out in exactly the right way, delicious as ever. Oh, how I missed you, winter squash. Fall is almost here, kids. I’m not happy about needing to wear socks, but I do enjoy all the warm, comforting fall dishes.

We’re still not sick of spaghetti, which is great because we got more luscious Roma tomatoes, thyme, and a fabulous bonus: basil! I am kind of a basil snob, because I can’t grow it to save my life, but my mom has only to glance at the stuff and it erupts into basilicious glory. My point being, we frequently have basil from her garden tucked away in the freezer, and it’s so awesome that I have a real difficulty buying dried basil whenever we run out. Luckily, One Straw took care of us this week. We made a truly great marinara sauce (still riffing on 30-Minute Vegan’s recipe) with plenty of Week 13’s garlic and red onions.

Week 13’s potatoes had been waiting patiently, and with this new batch, we found ourselves with more potatoes than we knew what to do with. Who are we kidding—we always know what to do with potatoes! I felt bad eating mashed potatoes by themselves for dinner, though, and Red wanted gravy, so we found a new favorite recipe: Vegan with a Vengeance’s Mashed Potatoes with Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy. If it’s got chickpeas, it’s automatically a balanced meal! We had an extra-large can of chickpeas, so we added maybe a third of a cup to the potatoes and mashed ‘em all up. (We don’t even bother buying 15-oz. cans of chickpeas anymore.) Because we suffer from delusions of classiness, we added some sautéed onions and garlic to the potatoes too, before smothering them with that seriously badass gravy. Isa is not kidding when she calls it punk rock. If you haven’t tried it, you must.

After those three killer meals, we found ourselves kind of bummed to realize that we had several heads of lettuce and a bunch of grape tomatoes left over. (I think they are grape tomatoes. I guess they could be cherry tomatoes, even though they are way smaller than either cherries or grapes. I’m going with grape. Tiny, tiny tomatoes.) Oh, God, salad? Indeed, it was meant to be. We added one of those lovely green peppers, some shredded carrots, and a handful of sunflower seeds, then Red whipped up an impromptu Dijon mustard vinaigrette that made the whole thing tasty. Good job, husband. Leftover salad also works well in a hummus wrap, in case you were wondering. Also, in case you were wondering, Veganomicon’s hummus recipe is really dead-on. You probably knew that already, or else you don’t care because just about everyone can make hummus on the fly, but now you know. It would appear that our blender gave its life for this latest batch of hummus, and unless we can get a replacement part, it will be missed, although it weighs about 90 pounds.

We’ve got a few peppers left, and we’re planning to stuff them this weekend. We’ve already started with Week 15’s delights, and it’s looking exciting, so stay tuned!