squash | Oh, she cooks!

I didn’t getting around to posting this last week, but I had dinner at Amanda’s last Monday night. She had an abundance of CSA veggies (again!) and this time she made a wonderful fall vegetable roast.

Let’s see if I can remember what was in here…sweet potatoes, squash, mushrooms, roasted garlic, raw apples and walnuts, and dried cranberries (or cherries? I can’t remember, sorry) on a bed of greens.

She also made gluten free bread that was kind of an experiment. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or not, but we both just kept picking at it and ate a ton while we were talking. So much so we were too full for the snacks I brought along!

All I had to do was provide the dressing. In this old Frank’s Red Hot Sauce bottle is a small batch of tahini sauce made with about 2 Tbsp tahini, a pinch of salt, and maple syrup and cinnamon to taste. Thin it down with water. It was too thick to shake through the tiny spout, but we just took the cap off and poured the dressing on.

It’s a small miracle it paired well with the savory flavors in Amanda’s roast because I had no idea how she was planning to season it :) I’m sure we would’ve eaten the whole platter if we had a couple more hours to hangout.

Saturday I had the house to myself. When that happens, I usually accomplish a lot – especially when it comes to cooking dinner. I finally decided to use up some crushed pineapple I had sitting around, and some old bread. I also had the 2nd butternut squash, if you’d like to see how I started with that, just take a look HERE. Now, let us began with veganized baked pineapple.

I used This Recipe I found on Allrecipes.com, and used a couple tips I found in the comments (decreased sugar, using pineapple juice instead of draining & replacing with water). Preheat your oven to 350.

Add to the mixing bowl one 20oz can of crushed pineapple, NOT drained, 1/4 cup sugar, equivalent of 2 eggs using Ener-G Egg Replacer, 1 Tbsp vanilla. Mix.

I added the 2 Tbsp cornstarch a little a time, while mixing, to keep it from getting lumpy.

Then poured it in a greased 9″ pie pan…

dotted it with margarine, and sprinkled it with cinnamon. Into the oven for approximately one hour. This is also a good time to throw a potato in the oven.

Meanwhile, back in the bat cave…

I had this old bread to use up. Earlier in the day I sat it out on this cooling rack so it could get a bit more stale and dried out. I cut it into cubes, but completely forgot to take a picture, sorry!

I sauteed nearly two bunches of green onions with about 2 stalks of celery and half a jar of mushrooms in margarine with salt, parsley, dill, thyme, onion powder and fresh garlic until the veggies and garlic were soft.

Then, in a large bowl, added the veggies to the bread cubes…

Then added some plain, unsweetened almond milk. You’ll need about 1/2 – 1 cup, depending on how moist you like it to be. The recipe I used was actually for stuffing and so it mentions the extra moisture from bird juice…since this won’t have bird juice, I decided to just dump in all the almond milk I had left – 1 1/4 cups. I think it would’ve been fine if I let it bake longer, but since I started to get really hungry I just it ate it very, VERY moist. Remember, the more unflavored (=bland) almond milk you add, the more seasonings you’ll want to add.

You can pop the dressing in the oven with the pineapple and your baked potatoes. Just bake it until most of the moisture is absorbed, 30 minutes – one hour, depending on how much liquid you added and how dry you want it. Now about that squash I mentioned earlier…

When I took it out of the oven, there was a lot of juice pooled in the bottom of the foil it was sitting on. I poured it into my measuring cup, like so, and added a few tablespoons of flour…

and stirred to make a paste, adding water as needed to thin it down.

In a small pan I sauteed onions and garlic in margarine, adding salt and pepper to taste, with a little tiny bit of nutmeg because I read somewhere that would be pretty good. True enough. Once the onions and garlic were soft, I added a few tablespoons of water…

then poured in some of the flour mixture, stirring constantly…

Keep adding and stirring. Have some water nearby because you’ll probably need to thin it down at some point. You may also need to add more seasoning.

I also like to add Kitchen Bouquet to give it a nice color…

It’s also supposed to add flavor since it’s made with veggies, but don’t count on it to do much.

Now let’s look at our meal.

My favorite thing about baked potatoes is smashing them. Cut a cross into it, push the two ends together and…

Smoosh. You can add spices & margarine before the gravy, if you want to fatten it up a little (more).

The baked pineapple. Next time I think I’d mix the cinnamon right in.

And the dressing.

Almost like Thanksgiving. Oh yes, all you need to do is add the green been casserole I posted earlier.
For the squash, all I did was scoop some out and add a little margarine and a sprinkling of salt.