Butternut squash and carmelized onion galette from Smitten Kitchen

I have a friend from Michigan coming to visit me this weekend. I tried this recipe out last night and oh my was it good. It is again from Smitten Kitchen, and as usual I have tweeked it a bit for my purposes. Here is the origional recipe. I have said it before and I will say it again Smitten Kitchen has some mighty fine and super good recipes, go check her out!

Butternut Squash and Caramelized Onion Galette

For the pastry:

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut intopieces *To make the crust flakier I freeze the butter then at the last minute use a large hole cheese grater to cut up the frozen butter.*

1/4 cup sour cream, *I didn't have sour cream and used plain yogurt and it turned out fine.

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice *No fresh lemons so I just used the squeeze kind to no ill effect.

1/4 cup ice water

For the filling:

1 small butternut squash (about one pound)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 to 2 tablespoons butter (if you have only non-stick, the smaller amount will do)

1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced in half-moons * It turns out much better if you make the slices very, very thin. I made sure my knife was Kill Bill sharp and it worked well.

1 teaspoon salt

Pinch of sugar

1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste *I used 1/2 t because I like it hot

3/4 cup fontina cheese (about 2 1/2 ounces), grated or cut into small bits *No fontina cheese at my grocer so I used gouda, and it turned out well

1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh sage leaves *No fresh sage leaves, but the ground ones work fine, I used 1/2 t of dried. The rule of thumb for converting fresh to dried is 1 teaspoon of dried = 1 tablespoon of fresh.

1. Make pastry:

In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Place the butter in another bowl. Place both bowls in the freezer for 1 hour. Remove the bowls from the freezer and make a well in the center of the flour. Add the butter to the well and, using a pastry blender, cut it in until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Make another well in the center. In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream, lemon juice and water and add half of this mixture to the well. With your fingertips, mix in the liquid until large lumps form. Remove the large lumps and repeat with the remaining liquid and flour-butter mixture. Pat the lumps into a ball; do not overwork the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

2. Prepare squash:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Peel squash, then halve and scoop out seeds. Cut into a 1/2-inch dice. Toss pieces with olive oil and a half-teaspoon of the salt and roast on foil lined (for neatness sake) sheet for 30 minutes or until pieces are tender, turning it midway if your oven bakes unevenly. Set aside to cool slightly.

3. Caramelize onions:

While squash is roasting, melt butter in a heavy skillet and cook onion over low heat with the remaining half-teaspoon of salt and pinch of sugar, stirring occasionally, until soft and lightly golden brown, about 20 minutes. Stir in cayenne.

4. Raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees.

Mix squash, caramelized onions, cheese and herbs together in a bowl

5. Assemble galette:

On a floured work surface, roll the dough out into a 12-inch round. Transfer to an ungreased baking sheet. Spread squash, onions, cheese and herb mixture over the dough, leaving a 1 1/2-inch border. Fold the border over the squash, onion and cheese mixture, pleating the edge to make it fit. The center will be open.

6. Bake until golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from the oven, let stand for 5 minutes, then slide the galette onto a serving plate. Cut into wedges and serve hot, warm or at room temperature. Serves 6.

Ratatouille

This weekend I busted out my mandolin (the slicer not the instrument) and made ratatouille, yes the like in the movie. I was a bit sceptical but it turned out great! The issue was that I am a bit of a perfectionist and it took me FOREVER to lay out the pieces of zucchini, eggplant, red pepper and yellow squash so they matched. If I forgo my OCD ways this dish would be super fast to make.

I made some substitutions from the original recipe found here at the Smitten Kitchen website. I LOVE her recipes, check her out, she has some FINE food and with clear easy to follow instructions. The Smitten Kitchen has a cookbook coming out soon and I will definitely buy it. Anyway back to my version of her recipe. . .

Ingredients

1/2 onion, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced

2 cans diced tomato with garlic and onion

2 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 small eggplant*

1 smallish zucchini

1 smallish yellow squash

1 longish red bell pepper**

Few sprigs fresh thyme***

Salt and pepper

Few tablespoons sour cream****

I used a 11X13 cake pan but you can adjust the size of the pan to fit the amount of veggies.

Slice the veggies into 1/16 in slices (if you have a mandolin) or slice thinly with a knife if you don't. The ideal width is about as thick as a slice of pepperoni.

Drain the tomatoes and put in the bottom of the pan, mash slightly with a fork then stir in 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, spread evenly over the pan's surface .

Scatter the chopped onions and sliced garlic evenly across the tomatoes and olive oil mixture

Salt and pepper generously

On top of the tomato mixture arrange the slices of zucchini, yellow squash, eggplant and red pepper moving concentrically toward the center. (See illustration at the top of this page for clarification)

Drizzle with olive oil

Sprinkle thyme, salt and pepper

Cover dish with a piece of parchment paper (I used waxed paper to no ill effect)

Bake for 45-55 min until the vegetables have released their liquid but their structure is still intact.

I am not a fan of the mushy veggie so I cooked mine for 45 min and it was perfect.

Dish onto plates and top with a blob of sour cream.

I served this with french bread sprinkled with parmasan cheese and toasted under the broiler.

General note: If I were in a hurry I suppose I could just chop up the veggies and toss them with the tomatoes, onions and garlic, bake it and call it dinner but I like the way this looks.

*Eggplant note:I understand that there is a small rather cylindrical eggplant called an "Italian Eggplant" I couldn't find one of these at my local grocery so I just got a small one and then sliced the slices in thirds using the outside edged ones and freezing the center part for some other dish later.

**Red Pepper note: I didn't have a red pepper so I used some chopped red, yellow and green pepper I had in the freezer, it turned out just fine and looked pretty.

***Thyme note: I only had dried and it worked out just fine

****Sour Cream note: Origional recipe calls for goat cheese which I am sure is FANTASTIC but it was not in the budget this week and sour cream turned out yummy.

Random thoughts

1. I think I am going to make ginger snaps this weekend. I have a good recipe that is originally from the early 1900s. It still formulates delicious ginger cookies 100ish years later. If I make them this weekend I will post about it and give the recipe.

2. Yesterday on the way home I burst into singing Christmas carols. I sang 7-8 of them, all the verses I know (which is quite a few). I felt a surge of Christmas spirit. Shocking as Christmas is my least favorite holiday and I am usually decidedly bah humbug. Perhaps this therapy of having the entire week off between Christmas and New Year is working to melt my Scrooge's heart.

3. I need a hair cut. I always struggle with my hair and now that I am doing presentations and some public speaking I really need to get it together. I am thinking about getting a cut like Kathy Bates in "Harry's Law". I think it would look cute and professional at the same time. She has a double chin, I have a double chin, she has a roundish face, I have a roundish face. I think it will work.

4. I need to buy some suits if I am going to be doing this pubic speaking stuff. I think I am going to use Kathy Bates again for that, (she is somewhat round and I am round). She wears simple dark suits with beautiful shirts or dark trousers and a dark shirt with beautiful jackets. Simple, attractive, professional. Best of all I can take just a few pieces of clothing and rearrange them so as to have several outfits.

5. I need more sleep.

6. I really want to go dancing. When I was in San Francisco a few weeks ago I almost got to go Contra dancing but it didn't work out. I want to go dancing, specifically folk dancing, like reels and schottisches, Irish, English, Swedish and what have you country dancing.

7. Things went just fine with my talk on Saturday. The participants seemed to really like it and I certainly enjoyed it. It was fantastic to watch them catch on to coding ICD-10 and see them succeed at it. I am looking forward to doing another one.

NaBloPoMo Day 3, well sort of

Today I am not using the tickler because it feels lame to depend on it every day and I have other stuff to talk about...

Somehow by bonne chance I was invited to assist at a symposium for my professional organization on the subject of ICD-10. For those of you who do not live and breathe health care like I do, ICD-10 is a big change to the way we indicate that something is medically necessary and we communicate this to insurance companies so doctors and other health professionals can get paid for the work they do as well as keeping track of stuff like why people get sick and die. This is such a huge change I often compare it to the sky switching from blue to say purple.

Anywho, I am extensively trained in this new system and looking for opportunities to use it so I don't loose it. Which brings us to the symposium. When the opportunity was presented to me to help out it sounded like I would be facilitating discussion on this huge impending change and what it will mean to all of us in health care. Just making sure the conversation flows along nicely and we hit the talking points that the symposium organizer would like to cover. Easy peazy

Then Monday happens

On Monday I find out that I am actually going to be presenting formally at this occasion AND nothing too big just EVERYONE WHO IS ANYONE in Houston health care is going to be there, about 200 people worth. No pressure or anything. And of course I need a hair cut, I don't have business cards and WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR!!!! I am confident about the content, I can talk about that all day. I am confident in my ability to teach the content, it is my pleasure to teach. The issue is the things that I find tricky like clothes and hair. Oh and I don't have business cards so I am going to have to find a way to make some up pretty much for free because I am broke.

This is a fantastic opportunity for me to show my chops to the health care community of Houston and to really make great contacts for myself and for my students. I just need to remember to breathe and it will be okay. This chance thrust itself into my hands without any prompting from me and I am grateful. I am also (mostly) secure in the knowledge that this would not have come my way if I was not ready for it. I think that once I start talking and interacting with the audience that my initial fear of how not looking professional enough will dissipate and I will forget myself and just let it flow.

In other news, my fence is getting repaired, oh joy, oh delight, oh playing with my dogs off leash in my back yard. Also my neighbor's dog won't come over and bark at me in my own yard.

My fence came down in Ike and I have missed it sorely, or rather I have missed being able to play with my dogs off leash outside. I love my landlord.

I am off to work on my presentation, give it a little polish. The symposium is this Saturday morning, send me good thoughts.

NaBloPoMo day 2, so far so good

NaBloPoMo tickler 2. . .

"If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?"

One cooked with people I love for people I love. Cooking food then eating it is such a wonderful sensual pleasure to share. Some of the most fun I have had in my life involved too many people in the kitchen while chatting, cooking, and drinking wine. I love that laughing, close, jostile, bumping hips, touching each other, tasting, smelling ah lovely. Then of course there is the reward of sitting down at the laden table and eating together while talking about everything, preferably outdoors with wine flowing, kids playing, easy relaxation and all of us being ourselves. This would be a perfect last meal.

The meal we would be making, that is a hard choice. If it were my last then I will go with something classic. . .

Roasted garlic with goat cheese, tiny tomatoes, and basil leaves on crunchy toast rounds ,

Spinach salad with red onions, walnuts, and apple with chunky blue cheese dressing,

Grilled bloody, rare steak, baked potato, grilled asparagus and a nice Pinot Noir

Chocolate cheesecake with a shot of espresso with a lemon twist

and after all that a fine cigar and some really carmely mellow burbon.

NaBlPoMo and away we go

Well here we are, November, time of Thanksgiving and good intentioned blog posting for NaBloPoMo aka National Blog Posting Month. I want prizes!

The tickler for today is "What is your favorite part about writing?"

I have not written fiction in a very long time, probably about 3 years. I write a lot of non fiction in the form of acedemic papers. I miss writing fiction. One of the things I am looking forward to if I ever finish school is writing for pleasure. My favorite part of writing for pleasure is creating characters. I enjoy inventing interesting people and breathing life into them. I also enjoy finding the perfect word, the word that conveys exactly what I want to say no more, no less.

I often have a hard time paring down my writing. I read an excellent book on concise writing called "Writing Down the Bones" By Natalie Goldberg and it has helped me make my writing more spare. My natural resting place, however, is verbose. I like the idea of making my writing be the minimum most clean it can be, practice however, eh.

I like writing metered poetry, I like the constraint and the creativity it encourages.

I will leave you with one of my favorite poems of all time, not mine but Pablo Neruda's

I love it not just for the beauty of the words but also the perfect way it speaks to a love I have experienced, simply elegently perfectly described:

Sonnet 17

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be
loved,in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

The above is a salt rose

I am thinking about moving to a new house. My landlord has another house that I can rent at the same rent as I currently pay so that she can rent my current house at a much higher rent than I am currently paying, which is good for her and would be great for me because the other house is on a bayou. Yes, at the end of my future long sloping yard is an arm of "Little Vince Bayou". This is exciting to me because of the wildlife that will be coming by, of course there are fish in the water but also there are nutrias (see image at the top left), which look like very large muskrats (they can weigh as much as 20 pounds) and have deep orange front incisor teeth. They build their burrows on the banks of rivers and are generally interesting to watch.
Also there are turtles, great blue herons, snowy egrets, some roseate spoon bills, and some other water fowl that I am unfamiliar with.

The most exciting thing to me is that in theory I could have some ducks. I would love to get a few of these babies (see image left) they are called Runner Ducks and they are just as cute as a bug's ear. The neighborhood has a flock of exotic waterfowl that the neighborhood feeds and maintains and that wander the bayou. I think that Runner Ducks would make a great contribution to the flock. I am a little worried about alligators eating them but the other waterfowl seem alright so perhaps it isn't much of a problem.

I don't know if everything will work out with the new house, my landlord will let me know in January if it is available. Until then I am going to be doing research on ducks to see if it is feasible.

Gratitude for frugality

I am feeling so grateful for the people in my life who have taught me and modeled for me frugality. When I was growing up we were rather poor and we were way ahead of the trendy recycle curve, I have been making do, reusing and recycling my whole life.

When I was a kid my grandma (who raised me) was not what one would call domestic and I eschewed all things I perceived as “woman’s work”, so learn cooking and meal planning at my grandma’ s frugal knee, I did not. My grandma’s version of home-made food was to recombine processed products into a new thing. Her best dish was to take minute steaks roll them around Stove Top stuffing and stick a tooth pick through them then cover the whole thing with cream of mushroom soup and bake. Quite tasty, but not exactly from scratch nor without sodium count to give a blue whale hypertension. She had a lot going on in her life and she tried her best but Julia Child she was not.

When I was 18 I went to live with my ex-fiancé’s brother and sister-in-law. Not only did they change my life simply by the way they lived truly Christ like lives but also Ellen taught me about meal planning, grocery shopping, and generally living within my means while still living well. To this day I use the lessons she taught me about stretching my food budget, household management and living well. I am so thankful to her for giving me that gift (plus she is the only other person I know besides me who reads in the shower). Thanks to the Internet I have been able to reconnect with Ellen and wonder of wonders she posts the recipes I remember from those halcyon days of my life that I have great nostalgia for. As a wonderful extra added value the recipes are completely within my food budget, whoo hoo!

I try to share frugal living tips with my students. Most of them are single moms with minuscule incomes. Whenever I am feeling constrained by my budget I think about them and their struggles. I have one student who has 2 children under 5 and lives on slightly more than minimum wage. When she finishes the program and gets her certification she will be able to make more than 3 times what she makes now. Many of my students are in the same boat. By passing along frugal tips I am hoping I can help them deal with the increase in their incomes and to help them pay off their student loans by living well within their means. Not only that but I think that by providing positive reinforcement for frugal living I help normalize it. Our culture is so consumption driven and people feel bad if they are not rolling in expensive crap, I am hoping that by my speaking about ways to live within one’s means it will make it seem not less than but a better alternative to the consumer culture. At least I can hope.

Navel gazing/whining about my acedemic career (try to restrain you excitement)

I am the first woman in my family to complete high school and (when I finally finish in the summer) will be the first person in my family to get a bachelor’s degree. In the fall I will then be starting my master’s program, a double master’s a MBA in health care management and a MS in public health education. I am pretty damn excited about the idea of getting a master’s but I am feeling a little alone in the world with it. I wish I had someone who could hold my hand through what has been a somewhat arduous process of selecting and then getting accepted to a program.

As the end of my bachelor’s and the beginning of my master’s get nearer I swing from excited anticipation to anxiety and back. Can I do the work? Will I be able to swing working full time in a demanding career with a master’s program? Will writer’s block return and kick my ass? I find that daily I have to release desire and release expectations with all this. I have to relax and be in the idea that I will have sufficient grace to do what must be done.

I tend to be a planner, a worrier and a perfectionist at times. These traits have actually served me but sometimes they can rise to a rather neurotic level and it is a pisser to make them shut the hell up.

I am finding that exercise has been a balm to my agonizing. There is something about working up a sweat that calms me down. It seems to take all that nervous energy and focus it on something which, for a little while at least, drains it of energy and makes me feel so much better.

Taking action and list making are soothing. I have done everything I can to do with what must be done between now and then and now I just need to walk in the plan. This is comforting as well.

I find I do best when I quit focusing on myself and my problems. When I am able to look outward instead of inward, to talk to my friends (several of whom have master’s degrees) and to believe what they tell me that I will do just fine.

What wonder is this. . .warning:rambling post

This Friday I get to go to a teacher training. I absolutely love these things. I get to hob knob with seasoned teacher and they are SO amazingly generous with their advice. I carry around a little note book so I can jot notes after conversations because they just casually spout pure teaching gold. Coming into teaching in a rather backwards way has resulted in some odd learning curve bumps for me. I worked in the health care industry for nearly 20 years before I started teaching. The HC industry is VERY different from the teaching industry.
When I started teaching I decided to stop with the corporate climbing, the press for power and just relax and be with the moment of teaching. Now, after 2.5 years of it I am amazed at the personal transformation that has been wrought in me from this powering down. I am so much more relaxed and happy. (Of course it really doesn't hurt that I love what I do and by in large most every day is a fun adventure in magic joy land) I enjoyed being an auditor for compliance and I enjoyed performing physician and staff education I did, I actually thought I loved it. Compared to teaching however, it is a pale, pale love.

I am going to have to leave teaching temporarily rather soon and this really makes me very sad. Once I finish my certification I need to get a job and make some serious money for awhile so I can fund my master's degree and not be in some super crazy amount of debt from student loans (like nearly $100,000 of debt).
I know it sounds dramatic but the thought of leaving teaching makes me want to cry. The thing is that if I go back into the health care industry I will make more than double what I make as a teacher, yes friends that's right MORE than double. The plan is to pay for my master's degree as I go and not get any additional student loans while also paying down what I owe on my undergrad loans because they will be in deferment and I can pay against the principle. Fortunately I have no debt other than the student loans. It all makes just great sense on paper, it seems like the logical and rational thing to do but honestly it just feels dreadful. I also really need the master's degree, if I want to teach at the university level it is essential. ::deep resigned sigh::

I am hoping that I can find a job in the industry working at a teaching hospital or working in a training department that pays as well as my usual position as an administrator or an auditor. That way I could be well paid enough to do what I need to do financially and still be teaching. Here's hoping.

Are you alright, I noticed you just fainted from getting 2 blogs in 2 days, woah yah scared me there.

NaBlPoMo Welcome to November

It is November already and never you mind that I didn’t post at all in October, I was busy procrastinating, shhhhhhhhhh.

So November is National Blog Posting Month and now for the second year in a row I am taking a stab at it. The idea is to post daily; I am shooting for at least weekly.

Thoughts for today:
Tomorrow is the election and I am, as usual, wishing for candidates who I genuinely like as opposed to having to pick the lesser of 2 evils. I really want to have representation that appreciates the little things like oh, say THE CONSTITUTION and THE BILL OF RIGHTS, ahem. Let’s not even get started on my general dismay over elected officials who want to abandon due process simply because they are outraged by the crime committed (the exact time when due process is MOST needed IMHO). My further dismay at those politicians who want to make their version of Christianity the state religion and work on building a theocracy, not based on Christ like love but on some distorted view of crusade mentality. My horror over those fear mongering bigoted reactionary politicians who build consensus not based on the shining light of reason, moderation and equality but on fear, xenophobia and EMOTIONAL knee jerk hatred. Alright, deep breath. . .
I dream of the day when I can find a true Jeffersonian republican or a politician who can be both one who values life and freedom, who is moderate, respectful, honorable, honest, scholarly and in possession of integrity.
I know, I know . . . dream on little dreamer.