Butternut Squash is the Bomb

I love butternut squash. It tastes great, it’s incredibly nutritious, it’s fairly easy to cook with and it stores for months. I grew a bunch last summer and just finished using all of it. Here are my four favorite recipes for butternut squash.


Squash and Greens
1 butternut squash
2 bunches of greens, about 2 dozen stems, I prefer Kale or Chard
½ onion
Toasted walnuts – 10-15 minutes at 300 usually toasts them nicely
Feta, blue or other tangy, crumbly cheese
2-3 Tablespoons Olive oil
Cube the squash and put it in the oven at 400 degrees, until tender (20-30 minutes.) Chop the onion and saute it in a large pan over medium low heat. While both are cooking prepare the greens by washing and removing the stems then coarsely chopping into several pieces per leaf. Turn up the heat on the onions and add the greens and a cup of water to the big pan. Steam/saute the greens until nice a tender, add more water if necessary. When the greens and the squash is done prepare the plate by first arranging a pile of the greens. Put a big scoop of squash on top and then sprinkle a generous amount of walnuts and cheese over that.


Squash and Quinoa
3 cups quinoa, cooked.
3 cups butternut squash, cubed (1 large squash)
1 onion, chopped.
1 Tablespoon thyme
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 cup toasted walnuts
Toss the squash cubes with the onion, thyme, olive oil, and vinegar. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet and back for 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees until the squash is done. Cook the quinoa as the package instructs while the squash is in the oven. Mix the cooked squash and the cooked quinoa together and enjoy.


Harvest Chili
1 onion
2 cups broth, chicken or vegetable.
1 large butternut squash cubed
1 cup corn, canned, frozen or fresh
1 cup or 1 can cooked white beans, actually any bean will do,
Tomatoes – I use tomato sauce, about 2 cups, but the recipe this started with used chopped fresh tomatoes
Peppers – this time of year I use dried hot red peppers saved from my garden
2 Tablespoons chili powder
Saute the onion in a tablespoon of olive oil, add broth and turn up the heat til it starts to boil then turn it down to a brisk simmer and add all the other stuff. Add broth and tomato sauce if there isn’t enough liquid. Let it cook for 30 minutes or until the squash is cooked through. Salt to taste.


Stuffed Squash
1 clove garlic
1 large squash
1 T olive oil
½ cup walnuts
¼ cup blue cheese
2 tsp thyme
1 T honey
Cut the squash in half the long way, take out the seeds and stringy stuff and bake for 1 hour at 375 degrees. Mix the other ingredients together, enlarge the hole in the squash by scrapping bits of the flesh into the hole, pile the other ingredients in the hole and bake it until the cheese melts a bit, 5 to 10 minutes.


Where to get it local
Squash: all over the place, Midway Farms, Roths, EZ Orchards
Walnuts: EZ Orchards
Onions, Kale and Chard: Midway Farms, also likely at the Salem Public Market and certainly at the Corvallis Indoor Market.
Cheese: EZ Orchards, Roth’s, Lifesource, Fitts Seafood and check out www.oregoncheeseguild.org
Olive Oil: Victoria Estates of Keizer is available at EZ Orchards
Corn: check out the processors section for brands of corn canned and frozen in Oregon, get them in most grocery stores here.
Tomato Sauce: check for the Oregon brands but not a lot of tomatoes are processed here since our cool summers make commercial production of tomatoes somewhat challenging. A few of the farm stands have home canned sauce and Buona Terra near Monmouth is one of them.
White Beans: I’m not sure who has these locally grown here. If you know somewhere, let me know.

Walnuts worth the Cracking

I love walnuts. They’re healthy, they’re just right on oatmeal and I eat them several days a week. Like most foods, the price of walnuts has been increasing lately. But when I recently paid $8.99 a lb for bulk walnuts, that turned out to be stale, in the “natural foods” section of a local grocery story I realized it was past time to look for local walnuts.

I know there aren’t many walnut farms around the valley but I had a memory of a small handmade cardboard sign advertising walnuts on Silverton Rd east of Salem last year. The Saturday after the stale walnut purchase I set out to find it and thought I’d stop at EZ Orchards on the way to do some Christmas shopping (check the link in the farm stands section.) After loading up my cart with Oregon Wheat Growers soft white wheat pancake mix and berry syrups from around the valley for the out of town relatives I happened upon a bin of walnuts in their shells for ONE DOLLAR A POUND. I bought a few pounds. I’d read that the actual nut makes up about 48% of the weight of walnuts in the shell so I figured this was about $2.10 for each shelled pound. I would have bought more but I was worried that they were such a good deal something must have been wrong with them or that shelling walnuts was such a pain no one in their right mind would buy them in the shell.

I broke out these walnuts one morning when I was cooking that awesome Christine and Rob’s oatmeal from Aspinwall’s. I cracked one open, it broke apart with ease, and I popped a half in my mouth. It was entirely different from any walnuts I’ve ever eaten. It was crisper, light and kind of delicate. Most importantly, it was sweet.

I took the other half to my boyfriend and said “here taste this.”

“What’s on it?”

“Nothing, I just took it out of the shell.”

A quizzical look came over his face.

He thought that walnut must have been sugar coated.

Not long after this we set out to find the farm with the sign I’d remembered to see if we could buy more walnuts direct. East of Salem on Silverton Rd not far beyond EZ Orchards there it was, a small piece of cardboard with “walnuts” and an arrow indicating a left turn. We missed the turn and had to pull over and turn around. A ways down that road there was another sign, another arrow and down that road another sign pointing us down a gravel road. Finally there was a house, with a sign in front of an open garage. In the garage were a couple of those large square wooden farm bins. One had walnuts and one had hazelnuts. The walnuts were $1.50 a pound, still a great deal and since I’m buying more direct at least I know a farmer is getting the profit. I bought $11 dollars worth since that’s the cash I had. We stopped at EZ Orchards on the way home and found the walnuts there were now $1.99. It turns out those fabulous first walnuts I had were last years. Apparently it can takes years for walnuts to get stale if they’re left in the shell.

The more I eat these walnuts and learn about growing them the greater appreciation I have for the farmers who grow them. They’re so good I’ll be stocking up soon so that I’m never stuck with stale, expensive, grocery store walnuts again. I’m also looking at walnut trees, they take lots of room and often don’t produce a crop for the first 10 years. Imagine the commitment of a farmer who plants a few acres of these and then makes nothing from them for 10 long years of watering, weeding and pruning. I reflect on it and think “I should have paid him extra.”

For those to the North here is the walnut page from tri-county farms.

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/oregon_walnuts.asp

and their list of farms

http://www.tricountyfarm.org/crop_availability.asp