Sunday, October 28, 2007

Autumn recipe


Well, I know this is a really rubbish photo but I took it myself, holding the camera in one hand and hoping I'd got my whole head in the shot along with the butternut squash. As you can see, it grew enough to be harvested (and for me to be ridiculously pleased with myself) so I had to put it into the blog, even though the photo's so fuzzy that my own mother wouldn't recognise me. Probably just as well!

We eat lots of these in the winter months along with various other squashes and small pumpkins and a particular favourite recipe with my family is this one.
Take a squash, halve it and scoop out the seeds and fill the hollows with lumps of butter and loads of chopped garlic and microwave it until it's a bit soft. Then fill it with a pre-cooked mixture made of:
chopped onion
diced carrots
diced parsnips
diced sweet potatoes (lots of dicing going on here)
red lentils and enough water to cook them
a few small tomatoes
tomato puree
salt, pepper, a teeny bit of tabasco, fresh oregano's good too
a teaspoon of the mystery ingredient (ok, it's marmite)
anything else that seems like a good idea at the time

Then I put grated cheese on everybody's bit except mine because I don't eat cheese and it goes in a medium hot oven for half an hour or so
It's very, very yummy - real comfort food which for some reason the boys have always called Mr Grumblebum and if you think it's because it has an unfortunate side effect, it's not. When they were little we had a small pumpkin sitting on the kitchen table for a week or so and the kids gave it a name. Honest.

Well, time to go but I've been given some bare rooted autumn raspberries so whatever the weather chucks at me tomorrow I shall make time to go up and get them into the ground. I've wrapped them in wet newspaper for tonight so they should be ok
Happy gardening (and comfort cooking)

2 comments:

k wilko said...

just read your recipe sounds delicious, currently using your blog as an example. Thanks for this. Keep digging. Kath and Jenny

Nicky said...

Hi Kath
Lovely to hear from you, to think - the first time I discovered blogging was in your classroom!
Good luck this year to you and all your current students
Nicky