a LOT of stuffed squash

For me, this has been the VeganMoFo of epic posts. I had an epic pizza post, an epic soup post, a long socca post, and each of my Sunday brunch posts have a bunch of one thing per day. I tend to stockpile pictures for future blog posts that never quite get written, and VeganMoFo is a great way to get all those pictures/posts out.

I really like squash, and one of my favorite ways to cook with it is to stuff it with other food and then roast it. Sometime's it's simple, like the above squash stuffed with greens, raisins, and pepitas. But mostly my stuffings consist of grains flavored with herbs and spices and mixed or topped with a protein like beans or nuts.

This one has chickpeas, spinach, and... some grain, it's hard to tell. I often also mix in nutritional yeast or miso to give it a cheesy flavor.

Lentils and bulgur!

Topped with Your Vegan Mom's Vegan Parmesan.

I don't remember what's in this one, but the picture is making me want artichokes.

I can see pecans and chard in there.

Lentils, peas, and spinach. Protein and greens, whoo!

Zucchini is a summer squash, so it still counts, right? I know there's quinoa in it, because I always make more filling than I have room for stuffing, so I always end up with a side serving of the filling as well.

I think that's all the stuffed squash pictures I have stockpiled...

BUT WAIT!

A stuffed onion! I made a "cheesy mushroom" mixture with a nutritional-yeast-based cheese sauce and mushrooms, and had my grain on the site this time. Not squash, but still fills my obsession with stuffed vegetables

pasta and squash

...such an awesome combination.

I love pasta. I think when most people think of pasta, they immediately think of some type of marinara sauce. My nightshade allergies make this an unfortunate impossibility, but they don't stop me from loving pasta. I try not to eat a lot of it, because even though I go solely with organic, whole wheat pastas, it still tends to lead to me eating a lot of carbs that I might not work off. But I'd say we still have pasta at least once a week.

Since I can't have tomatoes, I rely on white sauces, alfredo sauces, or just--my favorite--olive oil, garlic, and herbs. I saute up some veggies (and often beans) in lots of oil, then add cooked pasta--bam! delicious pasta. My favorite veggies to add are onions, garlic, greens, and this time of year, winter squashes.

I love squash almost as much as I love pasta. Acorn, carnival, butternut, dumpling, delicata... you name it, I love it.

I usually don't peel squash before cooking, because it's awful to peel, and most squash skins are edible. (Well, they're all edible, it's just that Acorn squash skin is sometimes a little tough.) I just cut it in half, trim off the stem, then roast it at 475 for 20-30 mins, until I can pierce it with a fork.

This is delicata squash, one of the sweetest squashes, roasted and ready to be added to:

PASTA! Fusilli (that is, the spirally kind) is my favorite. There are also chard stems and onions and LOTS OF GARLIC in here. Probably rosemary, too (I don't remember), since rosemary goes really well with squash.

There is one squash I don't like as much as the others though: pumpkins. Don't be mad. Everyone else this time of the year goes crazy about pumpkins and pumpkin products. They're okay, but there are so many delicious squashes out there, I just think it's silly to go bananas over this one in particular, which isn't even as tasty as delicata squash!

I do love them for carving, though.

These were our pumpkins this year. Mine is the scary one, the boyfriend's is the one on the right. I wish I'd taken a picture of these lit up; they looked great. To the left, you can also see the organic Trader Joe's lollipops we gave out for Halloween.

Okay, more than halfway through VeganMofo. Great job to everyone who's writing for it, and thanks to all of you who are reading it!

Oh! ATTENTION BOSTON-AREA READERS: Melisser, of Urban Housewife fame, is talking about and signing her new book, the Vegan Girl's Guide to Life, at Peace o' Pie tomorrow evening (11/17) at 7pm. In addition to being awesome, Melisser is a fellow Vegan Mofo-er. You should totally be there!

no recipes, but lots of pictures. It's a fair trade.

I've been making lots of stuff from cookbooks these days, so while I don't have any recipes for you today, I DO have some pretty pictures!

In approximate order of healthiness:
Golden Squash Rings from christina pirello's cooking the whole foods way (yum!).

One of my favorite scrambled tofu recipes: Garam Masala Tofu from 101 cookbooks.

Quinoa from eat, drink and be vegan.

Blueberry Carob pancakes from... vive le vegan? One of Dreena Burton's cookbooks.

Cashew butter cupcakes from vegan cupcakes take over the world.

Toasted coconut cupcakes from the same.

Dulce Sin Leche cupcakes, pre-glazing, from -- you guessed it. Nothing will replace the lychee cupcake in my heart, but these came close.

Also, apparently if one leaves a kiwi next to garlic for about a week and then eats said kiwi for breakfast, it will taste a little garlicky and garlicky kiwi will put one a bit off one's breakfast. Just thought I'd let you all know.

it's not autumn anymore

...it is very much winter. Boston's been covered with a thick layer of ice after all the freezing rain and cold nights we've had. My thick skin is used to upstate NY's winters, so I can take the cold... but I don't like falling down every time I leave my apartment! So we're going to pretend it's autumn again:

I made the Autumn Puree from Eat Drink & Be Vegan a little while ago:

pretty, n'est-ce pas?

I'm sorry about the lack of updates. Between grad school applications and starting a new job, things have been crazy around here. But I'll be better from now on.

I've also made a few things from the Veganomicon - I'll post some of those later.