Mom's Birthday and Thanksgiving

My mom requested something low key for her birthday dinner, so I thought a fall pizza and some salad would fit the bill. I roasted a butternut squash at home the night before her birthday, and after work on Wednesday I planned to stop at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods to get the rest of the ingredients for dinner. I was in the birthday mindset, and had totally forgotten that it was also Thanksgiving Eve! Both the Trader Joe's and Whole Foods in Fresh Pond were absolutely packed with people finishing their holiday meal shopping. The hardest decision for me came when I had to choose some desserts. Whole Foods has the most amazing desserts!

My brother and I made Butternut Squash, Spinach, Onion and Ricotta Pizza (the same kind I made back in September). I love trying new things, but sometimes you need to have an old favorite. Here's the pizza before being cooked:

We also made a salad with organic mixed greens, mushrooms, tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, and apple. We drizzled a little bit of olive oil on top and added some Parmesan cheese. Lots of vegetables in this birthday dinner!

For dessert we sampled bites from the four desserts I selected at Whole Foods:

(Clockwise the desserts are: fruit and custard tart, espresso tiramisu, pumpkin spice roll, and flourless chocolate cake). 

Thursday was Thanksgiving...Pat and I got up early to head down to the south shore to see his family. The first stop was at his mom's house, where we helped finish preparing the meal. She made turkey (covered in bacon to keep the bird moist and infuse some extra flavor), mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, pearl onions, butternut squash, and cranberry sauce. It was delicious! Unfortunately afterwards we pulled the typical "chew and screw" and rushed over to Pat's dad's house for our second Thanksgiving meal, which consisted of the same dishes, except he made carrots instead of onions. Everything was prepared a little bit differently, but it all tasted amazing. Pat's family certainly knows how to cook! And if you can believe it, after my two Thanksgiving dinners (in a two hour time span) I still had room for pie. Pat's dad made a squash pie totally from scratch using a family recipe, which was so good. I've had pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie, but never squash. This is definitely a new favorite! Pat took down the recipe for the crust and filling so we can make it at home. Of course I forgot to take pictures of my wonderful Thanksgiving feasts, I think I was a little bit too absorbed in eating them. It was a great holiday, and I hope everyone enjoyed theirs as well!

Oh My Gruyere!

I think that the dinner I made last night is typically served as breakfast or lunch, but I could eat it any time of the day. Oh my Gruyere was it good!

I found the recipe in an email from Serious Eats and was immediately interested, both because of the ingredients and because the article heading was "Eat for Eight Bucks" (I never turn down a good bargain!). I mostly followed the recipe, with just a few slight changes.

Spinach Strata with Sage and Gruyere

Ingredients:

• 1/2 baguette (to yield about 6 cups of torn bread)
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 3 eggs (I used 4 egg whites and 1 full egg)
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons fresh sage, torn
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 3 ounces Gruyere (about 1 1/2 cups grated)
• 1 ounce Parmesan cheese, grated

Cut the bread into 3/4" slices and set on counter to dry out for several hours. I did this, but it didn't seem quite crispy enough, so I cooked for 5 minutes in oven at 400 degrees. If your bread is already stale, you can skip this step! Tear bread into small pieces when crispy.

 In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until frothy.

Here are my prepared ingredients, ready to be added to the frothy eggs:

Whisk in milk, sage, salt, pepper, melted butter and minced garlic.

Add the torn bread, making sure every piece absorbs some liquid.

Stir in the spinach and Gruyere.

Coat your pan with cooking spray and pour contents of bowl into pan. The original recipe calls for an 8x9" pan, but I added more spinach than the original recipe, so I used a lasagna dish for this. Add grated Parmesan cheese and more fresh ground pepper to top.

Cover with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 1 hour on the counter, or several hours in the fridge. While letting this sit, I went for a 6 mile run with Callie! Good way to pass the time. I got home and preheated the oven to 375 degrees and waited 20 minutes before putting the strata in. Bake until the top is browned and slightly puffed and the strata is cooked through, about 35-40 minutes. Allow to sit for a few minutes before serving. My entire apartment smelled of cheesy delightfulness as this cooked.

Beets

I also made beets to have on the side. I had a few different varieties (from the local farm) - 2 standard dark red beets, 1 yellow, and 1 candy cane beet.

Look how beautiful these are!

Boil on medium to medium-high for a little over an hour (less time if you cut them into smaller pieces).

And dinner is served:

The strata was so delicate and delicious. The Gruyere and sage were wonderful together. I'm glad I made such a big pan of it because now I have lots of leftovers! You may notice that the beets on my plate look like red and pink beets...I think I probably should have cooked them separately if I wanted to keep the original color, since the dark red beets stained the lighter beets.

You can tell that this was the yellow beet when you cut it apart:

Pumpkin Ricotta Wontons

For dessert I made some Pumpkin Ricotta Wontons. I'd been thinking about how well pumpkin and ricotta cheese go together, and I had ricotta cheese and pumpkin butter in my fridge. So I bought some wonton wrappers to experiment with. The wraps are all-natural, and have protein, so at least I was building my dessert on a good foundation. :)

Here's a wonton wrapper with a little spoonful of ricotta cheese, a little spoonful of pumpkin butter, and some cinnamon on top.

Fold the wonton in half and brush on some egg whites to seal the edges.

Then take the two small corners and bring them together to form your wonton shape. I baked them at 350 degrees for about 8 minutes.

Pat asked where I bought them because he thought they looked professionally made! He doesn't like ricotta, so the 2 wontons on the bottom had extra pumpkin butter for him.

And he added hot fudge to them:

I thought these were so good...very quick and easy, and they taste good both hot and cold. Now that I have the wrappers at home, I think I'm going to try out some other wonton or ravioli recipes.

A Big Bowl of Heaven

aka ... layered bowl of squash, sauteed onions, pasta, and ricotta cheese.

Today was a cold and wet one. I looked out my office window all day, waiting for the rain to let up just a little bit so I could run without being soaked to the core (all I had for running clothes at work was cotton, which doesn't hold up so well in torrential downpours). The rain didn't let up at all, so when I got home I went to the gym for a 45 minute tempo run. Most days I enjoy running in the rain, but today was so cold and I'd had a pounding headache all day, so the gym looked like a much more desirable option. 

I busted out a good 45 minute tempo that I felt really great about. I haven't gotten much sleep this week and have felt myself dragging, but sometimes a good workout is all you need to bounce back (even though that's usually the last thing you want to do). I walked home from the gym, so I ended up soaking myself anyway, and when I got inside I was cold, wet and starving...which calls for some hot, satisfying comfort food. Lately I've had an insatiable appetite for ricotta cheese, and I pretty much think about squash on a daily basis. So that was my starting out point for this meal. The other ingredients were things I happened to have at home (since there was no way I was braving the weather again to go to the grocery store). Thus A Big Bowl of Heaven was born!

Ingredients:

• Squash
• 1/3 onion, thinly sliced
• Whole wheat penne
• Ricotta Cheese (to taste)
• Olive oil
• Spices

At the farmer's market on Sunday I bought this beauty:

This is Amber Cup squash, which is very similar to butternut squash (my favorite) but is said to be a bit sweeter. I heated it in the microwave for 3 minutes so I could easily cut it in half. I  scooped out all of the seeds and placed the halves face down in a pan and added a few tablespoons of water.

Cook at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes.

As the squash cooked, I prepared my whole wheat penne and also sauteed my onions.

I cooked them until they were translucent and a tiny bit browned.

Take the squash out of the oven:

I only needed half of the squash for this recipe. I scooped out all of the squash and put in a bowl, added some spices (thyme and pepper) and mashed the squash up with a fork.

In a nice big bowl I made my layered pasta (I wish it was a glass bowl so you could see the layers, but I'll give you the play by play):

Bottom layer: Mashed squash

Next layer: Sauteed onions

Next layer: Ricotta cheese

Next layer: pasta

Next layer: Sauteed onions

Next layer: Squash

Top it off with a scoop of ricotta!

All of the ingredients were hot except for the ricotta cheese. If I'd made this in a Pyrex I could have popped it in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes, but instead I just microwaved for 2 minutes to heat the cheese.

Mix it up a little bit and dig in!

This was exactly what I was in the mood for after a hard workout and a cold walk in the rain. And yes, I did eat the entire Big Bowl of Heaven!

Happy Birthday (to me)!

Though I tried to delay as long as possible, my birthday came along anyway. There's something about turning 26 that seems unsettling, like now I'm really in the thick of adulthood. But its here, so I may as well embrace it!

For my "Happy Birthday Eve" celebration I had dinner with my mom, brother, and brother's girlfriend. We got some great Japanese take-out including shrimp and vegetable tempura, seaweed salad (Jim and Kristi had never tried this before and now they love it too) and lots of sushi!

My mom made me carrot cake cupcakes with orange cream cheese frosting (orange zest in the frosting):

These were quite delicious! My favorite desserts are orange: pumpkin pie and carrot cake!

Among my birthday presents were some kitchen items that I'm very excited about:

• Garlic press (no more mincing for me!!)
• Grapefruit knife
• Cupcake/Brioche pans (which came with a recipe for pumpkin muffins!)

Unfortunately my body wasn't feeling very happy on my birthday. I left work early after feeling dizzy and nauseous for a couple hours. I went home and napped for a while, then woke up very hungry, and decided to make myself a pizza.

Squash-Spinach-Ricotta-Onion Pizza!

Ingredients:

• Pizza dough (pre-made or homemade)
• Winter squash
• Spinach
• Onions
• Ricotta Cheese
• Oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

I used 1 acorn and 1 buttercup squash for this. I think it would also be really good with butternut squash. Cut squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and place in an oven pan. I tossed some cinnamon and green chili powder on top, then put in the oven for 35-40 minutes (until meat is tender).

(Cutting the squash in half is sometimes easier said than done!)

While the squash cooks, prepare the rest of the pizza.

Slice onions (I used small white onions that my brother's lovely girlfriend gave me!):

Saute in a little bit of butter in pan on medium heat until onions are translucent.

Once finished, take off heat and set aside.

Prepare the dough. I used half of a pre-made dough ball for this pizza. I covered a large cutting board with a thin layer of flour, and stretched and pulled my dough into a squarish shape. I weighed down the corners with glasses and a salt grinder, and let sit for about 10 minutes so the dough would retain the shape.

Then put the dough on the pizza pan, and brush a little bit of olive oil on the crust, to prevent the pizza toppings from making the crust soggy.

When the squash is done, remove from oven. Put the oiled dough in the oven for 5 minutes to cook a bit.

I took the insides of two halves of the squash (1/2 acorn and 1/2 buttercup) and mashed together. This will be my sauce instead of tomato sauce.

Then cover liberally with spinach (I used organic baby spinach):

Then add Ricotta cheese (I used part-skim):

Add sauteed onions:

At the last minute I decided to slice a piece of honey ham and add to half of the pizza:

Put in the oven (still at 400 degrees) and cook for 8-10 minutes, until the crust begins to crisp and the cheese is melty.

And Voila!! This was delicious, exactly what the doctor ordered! And now, back to bed...

I also happen to share my birthday with several people I know...so HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Preston, Taylor, Heather, Adam and Beth!