The Squash Chronicles Continue

2) SPAGHETTI SQUASH WITH ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS AND CHICKPEAS

Nug makes a breakthrough in food photography. So classy!

We were hoping that this recipe would restore our faith in squashdom and it totally did. We got the recipe from FatFree Vegan Kitchen, and if every recipe on that site manages to be this tasty, it's going to earn a position among my favorites.

Elements of Excellence:

1) Brussels sprouts. I genuinely wish these had been a tangible, edible part of my childhood. They are not the harbingers of nastiness that popular culture makes them out to be.

2) Basil. The recipe calls for dried basil, but we didn't have that. We did, however, have some fresh basil that is miraculously still living in a glass of water on my window sill. We chiffonaded (yeah, I really wanted to use that word again) it up and sprinkled it on top of the dish.


3) Sheer volume. Spaghetti squash is the Mary Poppins carpet bag of the vegetable world. You start scraping with a fork, it starts coming off in shreds, and it just won't stop. Yay leftovers!

4) Homeyness. I can picture eating this dish out of a bowl in front of a fireplace. This is unlikely to happen for me though, because Colgate bricked up all the fireplaces on campus. It's like they think we shouldn't be in charge of fire or something.

Cooking Method 1
I was trying to smile and not to burn myself.
Multitasking is not my strong suit.

What We Learned:

1) Bean's stomach waits for no one. Seriously, for someone with an enormous attention span for academia, she's like a bored kid during a long car ride in the kitchen.

2) This led to a more useful discovery: spaghetti squash is a very forgiving vegetable. When roasting proved to be too slow, we moved to the microwave with no ill effects (as far as we could tell).

3) Like most new 'chefs' we have absolutely no sense of timing.

Cooking Method 2

4) This is an incredibly forgiving recipe. Everything stayed warm enough and retained enough structural integrity that when we finally put it all in the wok, it came together as if we had timed everything properly.

5) Brussels sprouts aren't spelled "brussel sprouts."



Cautionary Tale of the Day:

No. Wrong. Bad.

This actually happened during our first squash meal, but let's go over it now. You are making pasta. Your house's only wooden spoon is a glorified tongue depressor, so you're using a metal spoon.

 Do you A) rest it on top of the open pot of boiling water? Or B) put it absolutely anywhere else?

If you answered A, you're dumb because steam is hotter than boiling water, and metal is a conductor. You are, however, in good company. Try not to curse too much when you leave important pieces of your flesh behind on the spoon.