Noshing Across the Nation

 Because of my daughter’s vegan lifestyle, I am trying to introduce more and more vegan and vegetarian foods into our home cuisine. She was the one to make me eat  squash. Really, I don’t think I ever ate squash at home. Although my mom made some dishes out of “tikva” – pumpkin, I was never into them.

Here, I mostly roast butternut squash, sometimes I stuff acorn squash with rice and/or vegetables.

Last week I saw beautiful Delicata squash at the new organic kosher store that just recently opened in my neighborhood. I simply had to get a couple of them. I decided to make them for  Shabbat. First, I thought of just roasting them as I do with the butternut squash. Then I thought of stuffing it with quinoa. Why not? I decided to make quinoa as I do kasha-varnichkes. I make it with lots of fried onions and mushrooms (no egg). I cooked both white and red quinoa a bit less than the package asks for, separately fried onions and mushrooms (diced small). By the way – not sure if everyone knows the trick of dicing the onion the easy way:

Take the onion and cut it in half through the bottom stem. Take the half and cut almost through without touching the bottom lengthwise.

Then, Cut crosswise, again, without touching the bottom. Now dice the onion. It will stay in place for you to be safe and have equal little pieces.

So, I took my pretty squash and scooped out the seeds using a very handy tool – melon baller.  Interestingly, I’ve never used it for melons. I then stuffed the squash with the quinoa mixture and put in a 410 F preheated oven. In about 40 minutes, the delicious squash was out! Not sure if the picture does this dish justice, but it really turned out great. Cut it in rounds and enjoy cold or hot.