Saturday Dinner

My first real post, beyond the introductory one. I'm quite proud of dinner tonight - we have vegetables in our fridge from at least four weeks ago, and I managed to use up a lot of them. And tasty, if I do say so myself!

Tonight's meal:

-local lamb steak

-colcannon

-kale

-squash

-pear & apple chutney

-pumpkin pie tarts

This meal started with an idea for a delicata squash that I read in a new cookbook Kenneth got for Christmas, "Eat Feed Autumn Winter." It wasn't an actual recipe, just a side comment the author made. We had a squash leftover from months ago, but still good. I cut the squash in half, de-seeded, then roasted it cut side down at 400 for about 15 minutes. When it was soft, I sprinkled blue cheese in the squash boats, then returned them to the oven just for a couple of minutes.

For the colcannon, I boiled 4-5 potatoes, skin still on. I don't see the point of peeling potatoes, even for mashed potatoes - I like the taste of the peel, and it's more nutritious! Plus it's a lot less work. Drained the potatoes then sauteed some sliced napa cabbage and garlic in the potato pot, re-added the potatoes and mashed them with some butter and my Mom's secret ingredient in mashed potatoes - 2-3 T of cream cheese. Yum!

The kale we kept simple - for breakfast we had eaten unbelievably delicious smoked bacon from Chester basin that a friend bought us for Christmas, and there was still quite a bit of grease in the cast-iron frying pan. I cut up the kale, fried the stems for a bit, then sauteed the leaves in the bacon grease with a generous sprinkling of red pepper. Not the healthiest way to eat kale, but - c'mon, it's kale. I think you could deep fry it with a mars bar and it would still count as healthy, wouldn't it?

Kenneth had picked up some Nova Scotian lamb this morning - a treat. We kept it simple, just searing it to medium-rare, and serving it with some apple-pear chutney we had made in the summer when inundated with fruit from the Noggins fruit box (we get a fruit box only in the summer months). And for dessert some pumpkin pie tarts - from frozen Taproot pumpkin - Kenneth made yesterday.

Still in the fridge: one butternut squash from about 5 weeks ago, one hubbard squash from at least 3 weeks ago, red cabbage from two weeks ago, potatoes, parsnip, carrots, half a napa cabbage, and apples. We'll keep you posted!