Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagna {Small Family Size}

A hearty meatless lasagna with butternut squash and spinach filling in between layers of uncooked noodles. This meal is a great way to enjoy farm share produce year round.

I did not get good photos of this lasagna for you. My spouse thinks that means I merely need to make it again. While I do have some community supported agriculture (CSA) farm share butternut squash left in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve, I have other ideas for them. Moving forward, always often, to new recipe ideas, and it seems silly to avoid this tasty recipe just because I don't have the food stylist's knack for making a piece of lasagna look good.

I like lasagna filling more than I like noodles, and I hate trying to keep track of all the boiled noodles without losing the little ruffled edges. Therefore I make lasagna that has a higher filling to noodle ratio--and use oven ready noodles so I don't have to stress about separating cooked noodles or having them tear off their petticoats or go diving out of the colander into the sink.

Plan to assemble the lasagna earlier in the day and chill it until you're ready to bake. It could probably be assembled the night before, but I didn't try it that way. This make ahead dish makes a 'small family' size pan (9 inch square) of lasagna, great for a couple of leftovers but not weeks of leftovers. 

For other recipes using butternut squash, please see my Butternut Squash Recipe Collection. For other recipes using spinach, please see my Spinach Recipe Collection. They are part of the recently-updated Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

Irish Cheddar Chicken Potato Leek Pizza

Chicken, blue potatoes, and leeks under a blanket of Irish cheddar cheese. Irish pizza? Cockaleekie pizza? Colorful pizza with chicken, leeks and potatoes? You choose the name that works.

 Follow me | Pinterest | Instagram | Facebook

A community supported agriculture (CSA) farm share is not typically a source of exotic produce. Although turnips, kohlrabi and celeriac were novel and exotic to me--and Swiss chard may be new to some--these crops have been around.

When we got purple potatoes in the share last year it was a surprise and a delight. I've played with blue potatoes from Costco before, and it's also fun to make colorful food straight out of the farm share box. For this pizza I wanted to punch up the color of a chicken, leek, and potato pizza. Yes, that's practically cockaleekie pizza, but according to Google Trends no one searches for that. So you get a boring-yet-descriptive name. I've got a Corned Beef & Cabbage Pizza coming up, but to help mentally shift gears from Valentine's day/Mardi Gras/Chinese New Year to St. Patrick's Day I'd like to share this pizza now.

Why am I sharing St Patrick's Day recipes when I'm Scandinavian/Scottish, not Irish? Advertising, folks . . . it works on me. Cabbage goes on sale shortly after I've finished up the farm share veggies and had my fling with mushrooms from the store. We like corned beef and potatoes and eat them despite not being kissable due to our heritage. Shoot, we eat a bunch more seafood because it's also on sale. Speaking of ads, I'm playing around with Amazon ads in my sidebars. Please let me know if they are intrusive, thanks.

For another Irish-themed pizza, please check out my Tremendously Green Pizza (talk about a non-SEO friendly title!) that has bacon, cabbage, and potatoes. You can find other pizzas for your Friday Night Pizza Night at my Visual Pizza Recipe Index.

Pork & Leek Dumplings

Asian-inspired pork and leek dumplings simmered in seasoned stock and served with rice. Leftovers were also good served in the stock as a dumpling soup.

This is not Polish pottery. This is from the Inker pottery in Croatia. I got it while I was deployed.

When I get leeks in the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share they usually come in big bunches. I can't use them all up in a week, so I will chop them in half long ways, then chop into a useful dice, soak to remove grit, and spin in my salad spinner. After they are clean I spread them out on a tray to freeze before popping them into a zip top bag. During the winter I'll add leeks to whatever looks good. Like these dumplings.

This post is an example of letting go of the quest for perfection, because less than perfect-looking food still tastes good. Sure, I'm going to try and get a photo that looks as good as I can style it because you can't smell or taste through the screen, but I'm also going to show you how we really ate these dumplings--off plastic plates, without a healthy green vegetable side dish in sight.

Where to start? I suppose with the dumplings. I picked up a package of dumpling wrappers without a plan. They got shuffled around the fridge, stuck into the freezer, forgotten then rediscovered during a freezer reorganization. Finally I got the idea for dumplings. This recipe comes primarily from Mark Bittman's app How To Cook Everything. I won the app years ago in a giveaway from The Naptime Chef. I have the app on my phone, and if I'm sitting waiting for a kid and dreaming up recipe ideas I can search for inspiration to fan those flames. I had some Thai turkey stock on hand, so I figured I'd give the dumplings a Thai twist then simmer them in the turkey stock.

After mixing up the filling, my son and I spent an enjoyable afternoon assembling the dumplings. [Ok, it wasn't the entire afternoon, but it wasn't 10 minutes of work. There's a big reason I don't list preparation times on this blog--I AM SLOW IN THE KITCHEN. If I read that it takes 10 minutes to prep the ingredients for a recipe, I can guarantee that it will take me easily 30 minutes. I'm just slow, and I'm OK with that.] We chatted about life, as folks typically do when working together towards a common goal, and didn't really focus on creating the perfect photo-worthy dumplings. We weren't in a hurry, it was a Sunday, and we were just enjoying the moment. The dumplings don't look perfect, and that's OK. After all that time crimping and chatting I just wasn't into fixing a side dish, so we ate these dumplings with rice my daughter started in the rice cooker. Not every meal has to meet the perfection of whatever meal ideals are currently in vogue.