Cooking Therapy

{Thanks everyone for your comments after my last posts. I've fallen behind in responding and just want you all to know I appreciate your encouragement.}

So after I was all melancholy Saturday night I completely turned myself around through cooking. I get great satisfaction from figuring out something tasty to make from our weekly CSA shares. This week was the first time we were presented with butternut squash, and I just had to come up with something to showcase this little beauty.

So here is what I made. It is an adaptation of a recipe from my friend Denise, which is basically a pasta dish with spinach, almonds, garlic, and lots of parmesan cheese. Very tasty. My version adds squash.

Here is what I did: wash and prepare the squash for roasting. I cut it into about 1/2 inch size pieces, but I left the skins on... in the future I would remove them because we got plenty of crunch from the slivered almonds. Before going in the oven I drizzled with olive oil, added salt and pepper, and a tablespoon or so of water to the pan. It was on the roast for about 15 minutes.

I selected my saute pan, and knowing I had some time I toasted up some sliced almonds in it. About half a cup worth. When they were done I set them aside for later.

I then washed the dark greens and heated oil in a pan. In went: a small yellow onion, three cloves of garlic, and about 20 small sage leaves from my herb pot. (Thanks Liz!) After the onion and garlic concoction was soft, I added the dark greens to the pot. Don't you love how we captured the steam coming up?

Once these had softened I just waited for the squash to be ready. I grated a bunch of parmesan. June and I actually took a bath and Adam took over cooking. When the squash was done it got tossed in the pot. Then came the spaghetti noodles and almonds. The whole thing was mixed all together with tongs and then served with lots of cheese on top.

It was very tasty. June ate roasted bits of squash rolled in cheese. She LOVED it. I felt proud of my daughter having such fancy taste, and gave her noodles to play with while we ate. All in all, I was quite pleased with myself.

In my family you can measure our moods by how recently we've eaten. In this case, I added the pleasure of work to that, and went to bed very happy.