Sunday, August 12, 2012

Delicious summer squash/potato/broccoli hash

I'm so excited about this, because it's a recipe I came up with all on my own, and it turned out delicious!  I've been trying to get up the courage to learn to use my pressure cooker the past couple of weeks.  The first time I tried it, whatever I made turned out well (I can't, at the moment remember what it was), but the second time I tried to cook some quartered red potatoes, but it didn't work well.  I had misplaced the manual that goes with it, and I was in a bit of a hurry to get dinner on (which is not the best time to be trying to learn to use my fancy equipment), so I googled "pressure cooker potatoes" and found a page on WikiHow, or something like that. It said to put the potatoes in the cooker with some water and cook them according to the instructions that came with the cooker.  Dude, if I had the instructions, I wouldn't be looking it up, now, would I?  I looked at several other places and couldn't find it, so I just winged it, but I didn't cook them long enough.  They were still quite hard, so we didn't end up eating most of them, and they went in the fridge to live the life of the leftovers.
     Tonight, I decided to see what I  had in the fridge that we could eat, and I realized that we'd better eat those potatoes before I had to throw them out.  I also had some more of the squash that never ends, and some broccoli, so I decided to do kind of a stir fry and see what I came up with.  I chopped the potatoes and squash in my Chopper*, and then I chopped the broccoli into small pieces and cooked them in a frying pan with some coconut oil (expeller pressed, that has no coconut flavor).  After a while I added 1/2 cup of water and then put the lid on to let it all steam for awhile. Then I got the idea to season it like we do fish, with butter, dill weed and lemon.  I put about 1/4 cup of butter and let it melt down, then I squeezed a lemon over all of it and sprinkled the dill weed on top and mixed it up.  I used quite a bit of dill weed.  Then I added salt and pepper and served it.  It was fabulous.  So there's another idea for using your squash.  I guess this would be a summer squash, potato, broccoli hash.

*Do you know about The Chopper?  It is one of my all time favorite kitchen tools.  See it here:  http://www.amazon.com/Progressive-International-GPC-4000-Vegetable-Chopper/dp/B000F9JP3O/ref=pd_sim_sbs_hpc_1

Whoa! I just noticed that the price has gone up about 25% since  I bought mine last year.  There are others that are less expensive if you search "The Chopper" on Amazon, but I can't vouch for the quality.  This has worked very well for me.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Here a squash, there a squash. . .


It seems like this time of year, we either have squash coming out our ears, or we don't have any at all (which probably says something about the number of friends we have, but I hope not).  This year would be the former, and I've actually been getting a little creative about how I use it.  Squash is not an all-around favorite at our house.  I eat it because it's good for me, but I can't say that it's at the top of my preferences list.  I don't dislike it at all, I just don't find it to be all that flavorful, no matter what I do with it.  I have found that we can eat a lot more of it if I put it other recipes, and I just wanted to pass along a few suggestions for using it.  You don't really  need recipes for these ideas, because we're just going to put them in stuff we're already making.  

1.  Squash muffins or bread.  You just use your favorite zucchini recipe and substitute the yellow squash.  Actually, any of these ideas are for any kind of summer squash.

2.  Stir Fry.  Dice or slice the squash and add it to the vegetables in your stir fry.  Put a good teriyaki sauce over it to add more flavor.  

3.  Add to casseroles.  You can dice, slice, or shred squash and add it to almost any casserole recipe.  

4.  Hawaiian haystacks.  Same thing here, and if you want to give it more flavor, saute it in a little oil or butter until it's a little bit browned, then put it in a bowl and serve as one of the toppings.  

5.  In tacos.  You can shred it up and mix it in with the taco meat, or just shred it and use it raw as one of the toppings.

There are a few ideas to get you started.  What do you do with your squash?