Stuffed Winter Squash

Cooking is as much about eating as Friday Night Lights is about American football. I'm sure everyone who knows me and reads this silly little blog just did a double take when I said "football" since I have never exhibited the slightest interest in football and often go out of my way to avoid American football to watch more civilized sports like hockey and roller derby. Yes, American football is central to the story line in Friday Night Lights, it's the glue that binds the characters together, the engine that drives the story line, but it's the character's attitudes and struggles that transpire off the field that suck us, the viewers, into this weekly teen drama with a capital D. It's like that with cooking. It's the act of supporting the community you live in buy buying from local farms. It's prepping a meal for friends, driving down to their house and having conversations in the kitchen while you spoon out the guts of acorn squash, setting the table together, laughing, debating, and yes, eating, that make cooking more about community than food itself. Food is something that makes it possible for a group to gather around a table, raise a glass of wine, and toast "Here's to good friends living large in Texas" (or where ever you happen to be).

Stuffed Winter Squash

Cold Weather Breakfast

The fall weather is in full swing, and the best morning breakfast on these days must be steel-cut oats. Chop up some apples, sprinkle with sugar and add a pinch of nutmeg. Pair with some Market Spice tea and all the chills in your toes and fingers will disappear. I use Bob's Red Mill, and it only takes about 20 minutes to cook, and is creamy and delicious. I don't even know why people bother with regular oatmeal when they can have steel-cut oats. 

 

Hudson’s Humble (Apple) Pie

Autumn in Washington State mean apples, and lots of ‘em. So, when we moved back a few weeks ago, one of the first things I purchased was an apple corer/ slicer/ peeler in hopes it would help me take advantage of the bounty of apples grown in my home state. This weekend we headed over to one of the apple farms and picked up some cherry apple cider and apples of the Jonagold and Granny Smith variety for pie making and I finally had a chance to use my new doodad. I discovered it now takes approximately a minute and a half to prep an apple to go into an apple pie. Plus, it’s really fun to use, in a nerdy homesteading kind of way.

However, none of this would have even happened if it weren’t for Hudson. See, my friend Vanessa, who has been the cutest preggers lady for the last nine months, finally graced us all with her son Hudson’s presence. And he is a cutie. Normally newborns have that “I’m an alien prune and I look like I need these wrinkles ironed out of me” look about them, but not Hudson. So on our way back from the apple farm, my wife and I got to go take a peek at the cutest six hour old I’ve ever seen, and I knew right then who I would be making a pie for. Before I laid the top crust on the pie and popped it in the oven, I pulled out my trusty cooking stamping set (that my awesome friend Ruth in Germany sent me) and stamped “Hudson’s Humble Pie” and “Apple of Our Eye” into the crust as a sentimental bitch slap to Martha Stewart. Boo-yah!

Hudson’s Humble (Apple) Pie Recipe