Babe's "Naked" Fruit & Veggie Salad ♥

Today's salad inspiration: A "naked" salad: No dressing. Not a drizzle of vinaigrette, not even a splash of lemon juice. What do we think, what makes a salad a salad? Is it the dressing? or what's dressed?

Back in June, a reader forwarded a recipe. (Thanks for the recipe, Mary!) She listed a few of my favorite ingredients for salads, romaine and chopped vegetables plus fresh fruit and dried fruit, coconut and a few nuts. The instructions were simple, "Cut all ingredients in medium pieces and mix together. Very delicious!" The recipe struck me as a fall salad so onto the stack it went until last week when it hit me, Hey wait, this salad has no salad dressing! Sure enough, said Mary when asked. "Actually, I like it without dressing."

My brain got to working. Is it the "dressing" that makes a collection of chopped veggies a salad? Do I ever make a salad without stirring in some sort of something to bind it all together? Admittedly, I was a little dubious – but fully prepared for a new food discovery too!

Roasted Delicata Squash ♥

The very easiest winter squash to cook, the delicata, here oven-roasted in pretty little half rings.

Say hello to my very favorite "easy weeknight vegetable" -- at least during the fall and winter. It's the delicata squash, see those two long-ish squash in the background of the photo? Those are delicata squash. What you can't see is that these guys are small, maybe six inches long. One squash feeds two or four, no need to pack up leftovers.

And delicata skins are edible, not as soft as a zucchini skin but not as hard as the skin of a butternut squash. This is good news because -- there's no peeling!

And unlike a butternut squash, where you need to worry about How to Cut, Peel & Cube a Butternut Squash and Keep All Ten Fingers. No, not these delicata babies, these baby delicatas. It's easy as can be to slice into a delicata squash, no minute in the microwave required. Just you and a sharp knife. Or hey, a dull knife, you decide.

Pumpkin Hummus with Honey ♥

Today's healthy hummus recipe: A traditional hummus, turned pretty and slightly sweet with pumpkin.

Once upon a time, back BFB (before Facebook), back BiP (before iPhones, iPads and iLives), there was a food blog which published one hummus recipe after another. Week in, week out, hummus and more hummus and still more hummus. I've lost track of the blog but at the time, I wondered, Who can eat so much hummus?

I'm here to say: it happens! A couple of months back, a Syrian restaurant opened nearby. Their hummus is so creamy-dreamy, I don't want to know how much olive oil it takes to achieve ethereal dimensions.

So last week I set out to use up some of that kabocha squash "pumpkin" I've been roasting. (See Homemade Kabocha Squash "Pumpkin" Purée from Kitchen Parade.) Hummus came to mind -- especially because the textures of roasted pumpkin and puréed garbanzo beans are so similar. Could I actually make a low-cal hummus?

Mashed Potatoes & Carrots ♥

These are definitely not your gramma's mashed potatoes! (Mine either!) But they belong in the category of "Why haven't we been doing this forever?" or maybe even a "genius recipe"! Just cook and mash potatoes and carrots together. You'll need hardly any (if any) fat and they'll be creamy beyond belief.

Canadian Readers, these would be a great addition to Thanksgiving dinner. Do enjoy!

~recipe & photo updated 2005 & 2011 and republished 2011~
~more recently updated recipes~

2005 Original: Ooooo, if this isn’t comfort food, what is? Potatoes and carrots are verboten for Atkins followers but their extraordinary loss is our magnificent gain. Tonight I cooked and mashed a pound of Yukon golds and a pound of carrots with nothing more than a tablespoon of butter and salt and pepper. The color is extraordinary, the taste … well, let’s just say, oooooooooooooo.

Big TIp: Bypass those bags of prepeeled carrots for they have no flavor when cooked. And come on, it takes only eight minutes – EIGHT MINUTES – of prep work to dice the potatoes, peel and dice the carrots! Your family will thank you. Heavens, you’ll thank you!

2005 Update: Mashed Potatoes & Carrots swept my family. I told my 80-year old aunt about them one evening last spring. She called an hour later to report, "I ate the whole pot." And here's a tip from my cousin Lynda who makes them all the time now. 'I've taken to using a smaller amount of water when I boil the veggies, and use all of it for the mashing - just add the salt, no butter. Delicious and no fat!' Atkins and South Beach and low-carb folks, if you're ever tempted to stray, here's a worthy temptation.

2011: This is one of a couple of dozen recipes from A Veggie Venture which I make all the time -- and if I weren't blogging, would make all the time!

Favorite Pumpkin Recipes ♥

Just in time for "pumpkin season" – that's October and November in the northern hemisphere – my favorite pumpkin recipes, sweet and savory and everything in between.

BUT FIRST, A FEW FACTS
Pumpkins are for jack o' lanterns, sure -- and Cinderalla carriages and moonlit nights awaiting the Great Pumpkin.

But best of all, pumpkins are for eating! But don't try eating pumpkins grown for Halloween carvings, they'll be watery.

Instead, for cooking, choose anything except a carving pumpkin. In fact, my favorite "pumpkin" is called a kabocha squash (more information below). No surprise, though, pumpkins are part of the squash family.

In 2009 and again in 2011, pumpkins are in short supply. I've been reading about shortages of canned pumpkin purée.

When buying canned pumpkin, be sure to buy "100% pumpkin purée" which is 100% pumpkin and not "pumpkin pie mix" which is pumpkin mixed with spices and other ingredients.

It's easy to make your own pumpkin purée from scratch (recipe below) but canned pumpkin is more economical and, honestly, our taste buds have been trained to "like" canned pumpkin.