Food Snapshots

Yesterday Simon and I made the bestest dessert ever! I bought something similar to this at a Christmas craft fair and figured I could make it myself. What I bought consisted of a layer of hard candy then a layer of graham crackers and a layer of dark chocolate topped with chopped cranberries.

I wasn't sure how to do the candy part, so I tried a "toffee" recipe from Betty Crocker. Turns out that's not quite what I wanted. It did not stick to the graham crackers. We'll learn for next time... Also we made the layer of chocolate too thick. It's good, just reaallly sweet! 

For Supper tonight I wanted to try "Meatless Monday" mostly because we don't have any chicken, we had pork last night and I don't eat beef... It turned out really well! We both had a second helping!

It is a quinoa-vegetable mixture in a half an acorn squash. 

 

Thanks to Simon for the awesome picture :)

Here's my "kind-of" recipe: 

1 or 2 acorn squash

1/2 cup quinoa (uncooked)

1 cup vegetable stock

1 medium onion

1 clove garlic, minced

1 cup/can beans 

(I like kidney beans. I soaked/cooked dried beans, and added them until it looked like enough, so I'm not sure how much I actually put in)

2 cups chopped fresh spinach

salt and pepper

allspice

grated Parmesan cheese

1. Cut the acorn squash in half. Remove seeds and stringy middle stuff. Salt and pepper the sqaush. Place in a baking dish cut-side down. Put a small amount of water in the bottom of the dish. Microwave on high for 10-15 minutes. 

2. While the squash is cooking in the microwave, sauté the onion and garlic in a bit of oil in a medium pot. When soft add  the vegetable stock and quinoa. Bring to a boil then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes. When the quinoa's almost done add the beans (drained), spinach and allspice (I didn't measure, probably   1/2 tsp). Stir until blended and spinach is wilted.

3. Spoon quinoa mixture into the cooked acorn squash "bowls", sprinkle with parmesan cheese and broil in the oven for a couple minutes to melt the cheese. 

Enjoy! We each ate about 1/4 of the squash. I only made one squash, but the quinoa filling would totally fill two squash. I have lots of extra filling.