Guest Blogger: My Mom (Roasted Acorn Squash)

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I'd like to welcome my mom as the first of (hopefully) many guest blogger appearances.  She made Guy Fieri's Roasted Acorn Squash recipe and highly recommends the dish and also offers tips to make this meal a success!

For my birthday this year, my beautiful daughter Lauren gave me the new cookbook called "Guy Fieri Food, Cookin' It, Livin' It, Lovin' It".  I was very excited to try a recipe from Guy's book.  I am a big fan of his show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" and decided this past weekend to tackle a recipe. The book has beautiful pictures which I love and after much reading I decided to make Roasted Acorn Squash with Turkey Sausage, Peppers and Goat Cheese. It sounded delicious, easy and somewhat healthy. All was true but I had a few mishaps on the way.  

My first challenge was cutting the acorn squash. Lesson here is to make sure you have very sharp knives something I do not have unfortunately! After struggling with that the next step was to clean out the seeds from the squash and save them to roasted in the oven. Guy suggests to rinse the seeds well which I did and dry them with a paper towel. Sounds easy except the seeds stick to the paper towel and were difficult to get the off the paper towel. The next step was finding the correct pan so the squash could in and a pan for the seeds to get roasted in. Again sounds easy except if you have a small oven as I do. After much juggling I finally was able to get everything to fit and start the cooking of the squash for 35 to 40 minutes. The next step of preparing the vegetable and turkey went smooth again probably better if I had that sharp knife but I did succeed! 

The results of my first recipe from Guy's book was great. Both my husband and I enjoyed it and I would make it again. In fact, I will probably make it for Lauren on her next visit home. Best part is the recipe had leftovers so guess what we will have the following night...which is just fine by me. Bon Appetit!

 Thanks Mom!!

Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce

Over the past few months, I've been making a very conscious effort to cut back on my meat intake so, as a result, beans have become my new best friend.  I'll admit that I still crave meat but not nearly as often as I used to, and it hasn't been completely eliminated simply because I'm still training myself on how to have a complete meal without it.  As a distance runner, I fear low iron levels, etc so hopefully more research and education will make the transition easier.

Anyway, this baked bean dish isn't entirely vegetarian as it has bacon which, in my opinion, adds immense and much needed flavor.  (This is an example of my lack of knowledge on swapping out this for that - how does one make a solid baked bean dish sans bacon?).  The dish is very filling and serves as a meal, and the measurements themselves makes a TON so be prepared for eating beans for dinner...beans for lunch...and so on. 

Roasted Vegetable Quiche

The Roasted Vegetable Quiche is the round dish in the bottom left.

I've made this roasted vegetable quiche on two separate occasions:  the first for a "Long Run Sweaty Brunch" with my track team here in DC, and the second just a few weeks ago for a tea party with friends.  So, it goes without saying that this quiche recipe was good enough to make not only once, but twice, over a year apart. 

I think what makes this dish just delicious is the roasted veggies - the crispness against the soft egg fill is nicely balanced and the blue cheese, well, that speaks for itself. However, keep in mind that when chopping the vegetables, it's going to seem like way too much to fit into the pie crust.  However, trust that it works out fine in the end.