well, it’s tour time again! usually that means that i don’t do much cooking and rely on archived recipes to cover the time, but my good friend and tour mate daisy o’connor has some awesome friends in san francisco that we got to stay with for the first leg of our trip. and it JUST so happens that they enjoy having traveling house guests cook dinner for them.....oh boy oh boy! shit in a pot goes on the road! :)
i was a little intimidated in a new city and a new kitchen (and daisy made sure my reputation preceded me!) but she and i were a team and so i took a deep breath and plunged in! (why is it anyway that we shy away from our talents for fear that we might mess up this one time even though we’ve proven time and time again that we’re good at what we do?? life lessons everywhere ;)
our compiled pool of ingredients came to:
plain quinoa and red quinoa
an assortment of veggies (mostly green)
2 spaghetti squashes
an assortment of fruit (persimmons among them!)
my first inclination was towards “stuffing” the squash with the quinoa and veggies, but we didn’t start it soon enough to cook it in halves, so we cut it up into smaller chunks to cook it faster, and put them faced down (skin up) on a coconut-oiled* glass baking pan.
we mixed the quinoas together and cooked them in a rice cooker. (i do it at home in a pan/pot: 2 cups water per 1 cup quinoa.) we added a few spoonfuls of coconut oil (one of the luxuries of the evening!), a handful of fresh pomegranate seeds, a handful of dried date pieces and a healthy sprinkling of sea salt.
the broccoli, zucchini, kale, green beans, etc got chopped and went into a frying pan (with some coconut oil....) and were super no-fuss. all we added was a bit of salt and balsamic vinegar.
with squash i’m learning that the rule for how long to cook it is either A) at least an hour, or two.... or B) ‘til your hosts are really hungry. it was in at 450 for about 45 minutes when B happened. we scraped it out of the skins into a bowl adding, yes, two or so spoonfuls of coconut oil, a sprinkling of salt, a drizzling of honey and the surprise grand winner: nutmeg. we only used a small amount, maybe a teaspoon, with a shrug and a “why not?” that’s the best :)
daisy made a simple fruit salad with apples and persimmons and pomegranate and we presented our gracious hosts with quite the spread! a little discombobulated with a few confused moments but everyone enjoyed a wonderful meal :) we put everything out on the table on its own for people to serve themselves, and i was told the next day that during a phone call one of our buddies was still talking about our squash! (i definitely call that a success ;)
nutmeg spaghetti squash with pomegranate date quinoa and veggie stir fry
approximate price: pooled resources are harder to calculate, but this was probably around $15 worth of food for 5 people, only using what we already had! :)
*coconut oil is pricey, but supposedly is very good for you! it’s the GOOD kind of fat, and very stable so it has a high heat tolerance and is slow to oxidize (i.e. become rancid). it has a subtle flavor which can be very tasty in place of other oils (or butter....as this IS shit in a pot! ;)
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