Harvest Home

Hard to believe it's been well over a month since my last entry. Time flies when you let it.

Next Sunday is the Autumnal Equinox, the first official day of fall – known to some as the holiday of Mabon. Our family is celebrating by going to a local farm for some lovely outdoor festivities to honor the harvest season as it reaches full swing. There’s a “maize maze” – a labyrinth maze created in the cornfield that DD is quite keen on having us try to find our way thru. They also have pumpkin picking, hayrides and several other lovely bucolic activities. We are going to choose the pumpkin for our official Halloween/Samhain “Jackie Lantern”…we’ll also probably get some chrysanthemums, gourds, native corn & ornamental cabbages, too, so we can start decorating our home in earnest for autumn.

Later we’ll sit down to a nice family meal – some of it simple to prepare produce bought right from the farm that day, plus a couple things I will make ahead of time. No doubt we’ll all be ravenous after our rural excursion so the plan is to be able to come home and just pop a few things in the oven and/or microwave to make an easy but oh-so-luscious feast celebrating autumn’s glorious bounty, all the while giving thanks for our abundant harvest of blessings.

Here’s the menu as it stands now:

-acorn squashes with brown rice stuffing
-corn on the cob, bought fresh from the farm
-whatever-veggies-look-good…again, right from the farm
-apple cider for a beverage, maybe some local wine for Mama & Daddy
-and for dessert: pumpkin chocolate chip cupcakes w/cinnamon frosting

The stuffed squash recipe is an original concoction. The cupcake recipe is my tweaked version of one from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s delightful cookbook, “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World”. The book was a recent B-day gift from DD…hmmmm, or was it a gift TO her, lol?

STUFFED ACORN SQUASH

This sweet & savory dish serves 8 and is ultra-easy to make ahead. Arrange these beauties on a large platter decorated w/fresh greens, colorful gourds and whole nuts for a truly grand and impressive seasonal centerpiece.

4 acorn squash halved & seeded w/ bottoms sliced to sit flat as needed
1 c short grain brown rice cooked in 1.5 c veggie broth + ½ c apple juice
4-6 Yves meatless breakfast patties, diced, depending on how savory you’d like it
1-15oz can brown lentils, drained & rinsed
1 Granny Smith apple, cored, peeled & diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 small carrot, diced
1 onion, diced
½ c minced white mushrooms
8 apricot halves, chopped
1 good handful dried cranberries
1 good handful chopped walnuts
1-2 tsp garam masala
1 ½ tsp apple cider vinegar
veggie broth for cooking
margarine & salt to taste & desire

To roast the squash: set the halves in 1 large or two smaller baking dishes w/a few TBS of water in the bottom. Cover with foil & bake @350 degrees for about an hour, or until they are very soft.

To make the stuffing: in a skillet brushed with grapeseed oil, sauté the onion, carrot, celery & mushrooms till softened. Add the apricots, cranberries & walnuts and continue to simmer, adding enough veggie broth to keep moist. When all the veggies are totally tender, add the cooked rice, lentils, vinegar & garam masala. Finish with soy margarine & salt to taste.

Fill each squash with the stuffing mixture & either serve immediately, or wait until cool, wrap tightly to store in the fridge and then reheat later in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

(Without any margarine these come out to about 5 WeightWatchers points each.)



PUMPKIN CHOCOLATE CHIP CUPCAKES

This recipe has been halved and makes 8 cupcakes. For the frosting I cheated and used store-bought icing (often vegan, surprisingly!) The cupcakes in the cookbook are glazed with a delicious-sounding cinnamon icing, but since I had the stuff waaaaay back in the cupboard I just went ahead & added a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon to 1/2 cup of plain vanilla frosting and thinned it a bit with soymilk.

½ cup canned pumpkin
1 ½ TBS grapeseed oil
1 ½ TBS applesauce
½ cup sugar
2 TBS fresh orange juice
½ tsp vanilla
½ tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp salt
2/3 cup all purpose flour
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
1/3 cup vegan chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 and line muffin pan with cupcake papers. In a mixing bowl, combine the pumpkin, oil, applesauce, sugar, juice, vanilla, cinnamon & salt and whisk together well. Add the flour, baking soda & powder and combine. Fold in the chocolate chips. Fill the cups about 2/3 full. Bake about 20-24 minutes, testing for doneness with a toothpick coming out clean. Place on a wire wrack and frost when totally cool.

(Without the frosting the cupcakes are 3 WeightWatchers points each. If you figure about a tablespoon of frosting per cupcake, then you should add about 1-2 more points.)


May your own harvest of blessings be plentiful and joyous today & always!!!