Tag Archives | squash

Steamed Veggie & Quinoa Bowl with Garlic ‘Butter’

Steamed Veggie & Quinoa Bowl with Garlic 'Butter'

This recipe may win the prize for the simplest one on this site so far. It is simply steamed veggies with quinoa and melted coconut oil with garlic. Maybe this is why it took so long to make it onto the blog, I don’t know, do you really need a recipe for this? But then someone pointed out to me it’s not always about the recipe but the inspiration to make something. So I hope this inspires you, it really is worth the effort.

Steamed Veggie & Quinoa Bowl with Garlic 'Butter'

I have to admit, this isn’t something I make for us very often. I guess it’s humble enough to forget about by grocery list/dinner-making time. It’s inspired by a stall at the Granville Island Food Court that always sold salad rolls that my sisters and I would get for lunch when we were little (to go with our donut holes and pizza pretzels).

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Radicchio Salad with Roasted Acorn Squash & Hazelnuts

My obsession with radicchio doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Luckily, although she turns the colour of of one when she’s mad, my baby didn’t come out an actual radicchio, despite the amount that I ate while pregnant.

Besides its fresh, subtle bitterness, crisp lettuce-y texture and nostalgia it brings for the outdoor markets on the cobblestones of Rome, there’s another reason that we eat a lot of it in our house. It’s the same reason that versions of this salad and this salad happen an awful lot at our place too. Radicchio, despite its fragile-seeming texture, is robust and lasts for quite a while in your fridge.

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Millet & Butternut Squash Polenta with Roasted Beets

I was picking up my husband from work one of those very icy nights in January when you wonder why you’re anywhere but home. I left early (because Vancouver + snow = unpredictable everything) and got there a bit early. I was parked and listening to the CBC and they had one of those calm-voiced announcers on talking about a Danish word/concept called ‘Hygge’.

I had never heard of it before, but sitting in my chilly car, around dinnertime at about 40 weeks pregnant, they had my full attention. As it turns out I want to live in Denmark. Hygge is something that we don’t have a direct translation for let alone a word for in the English language. Roughly, it means ‘cozy’ but it’s more than that.

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Roasted Garlic & Miso ‘Butter’ (on Roasted Kabocha Squash)

Roasted Garlic and Miso Butter

This butter is my new obsession. I wanted a savoury spread that was fatty like real butter, didn’t make everything taste like coconut (ok for some things, but not for everything), wasn’t a pain to make and had rich umami vibes. This is so it.

It contains only three (powerful!) ingredients: roasted garlic (sweet, warming, anticarcinogenic, antibacterial, antifungal), extra virgin coconut oil (antifungal, antibacterial and antiviral, also contains lauric acid, which is great for the immune system and brain function) and chickpea miso (a fermented paste, big umami flavour, great for digestion, anticarcinogenic, reduces effect of radiation and pollution). Phew.

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