Exhaustion, comfort food, and the familiar

I haven’t posted a lot of new recipes lately, and that’s because we’ve been cooking largely from a roster of things we know well. This isn’t very common for us in recent years, but the stress of moving and new things has caught up with us and when I sit down to write out shopping lists on Wednesday evenings, right before Project Runway, I tend to pull from the familiar, and from our roster of comfort foods. Mac and cheese, meatloaf, all kinds of soothing goodness. We’ve made Brussel Sprout Pasta the other night, plain-jane pepperoni pizza, Spinach and Potato Gratin last night, and a variation on Pumpkin Bread.

Do you have favorite comfort foods? Things that sooth you when you are feeling stressed out? I’d love to hear your suggestions–I think I’ve been letting stress get the better of me lately (such as waking me up at the crack of dawn and keeping me awake for hours), and I’d really enjoy hearing how other people deal with such things!

Fun with Spaghetti Squash

The batteries in our proper camera died during a photo-bonanza at a parade on Saturday. That’s one thing I’ll give to our current town–they know how to throw a parade. So this photo of spaghetti squash comes via my cell phone. Blurry, but you get the idea.

Spaghetti squash doesn’t nearly come close to actual spaghetti, though it has fans that will tell you otherwise. It is, however, a great foil for pasta sauces. We ate a lot of it when I started losing weight last fall, typically with a tomato-based sauce and some quinoa. Tonight we ate it with, hilariously enough, actual spaghetti.

Spaghetti squash gets its name from the fact that the meat of the squash pulls out in long threads. You first need to slice the squash in half (carefully, now), pull out the seeds, and put the two sides cut-side up in a microwavable dish. Then you add 1/2″ of water or so and cover it with plastic wrap. Nuke for 10-12 minutes. Allow to cool at least ten minutes before you use a spoon or fork to pull out the strands.

The sauce we used was an easy turkey tomato sauce. You can make it as follows:
1 onion, chopped
2 clove garlic, minced
2 T olive oil
1 lb ground turkey
1 T or so tomato paste
1 bay leaf
some combination of Italian spices–basil, parsley, etc.
red pepper flakes
28 oz can tomatoes

Begin by heating up the oil over medium-high heat; add the onion and garlic and a little salt and cook for 5 minutes or so. Add the turkey and cook until done. Add pepper flakes and other herbs, along with tomato paste. Stir in paste until well-blended. Add bay leaf and tomatoes, crushing the latter with a spoon. Allow to simmer gently at least half an hour.

Voila. Easy dinner!

Fall eats

When I think of creamy mushroom soup, I think of the scary cans of cream of mushroom soup. You know the ones–you open them, turn them over, and thunk! the stuff–a sort of grayish color–flops out. It’s used as a binder for a lot of casseroles, and is a staple of mid-twentieth century cooking. But what about mushroom soup as soup? Aaaah, that’s another matter. This soup was delicious and with lots of mushroom flavor; we had it with some toasted peasant bread from the dough left in the fridge from the previous week.

This recipe is modified from one found in Deborah Madison’s classic Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

You’ll need:
2 T butter
1 onion, chopped
3 pinches dried thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T flour
2/3 c water
10 oz button mushrooms, coarsely chopped
1 portabella, chopped
4 c chicken broth
1/2 c half-and-half
salt and pepper

Start by melting the butter in a nice, deep sauce pot over medium-high heat. Add the onions, garlic, thyme, and flour, cooking a minute or two; add water and cover, stewing over medium-high heat. Uncover, turn heat up a little, and add all the mushrooms. You’re going to need a big cutting board or a bowl to hold the ones already chopped–the pile is pretty big. Anyway, toss them in the pot, add a little salt and pepper, and stir about, cooking for 4-5 minutes. Then add stock, bring to a boil, scraping up the bits of browned mushroom stuck to the pot. Reduce heat and allow to simmer 20 minutes.

After the 20 minutes have passed, CAREFULLY pour into a blender, leaving the center piece out of the cover, and blend. This is also much more easily done with an immersion blender. If I had one, I would have been very happy. Instead, I was happy simply not to be scalded by my own ineptitude.

After your soup is blended, put back on the stove over very low heat and stir in cream. Voila. Delicious soup that really hits the spot.