Skillet Mushroom Dip for Two (Quick Take)

Wine-soaked mushrooms sautéed with farm share vegetables and herbs, finished with creamy goat cheese. Makes enough for two--to share with your honey.

There are nights when I just want appetizers for dinner.  There are nights when I plan a romantic meal with my spouse.  And there are nights when the whole family feels like grazing.  Do you ever have those nights?

I had a hankering for something hot and shroom-y, but not all of the ingredients necessary for stuffed mushrooms.  So I decided to Dip It.  (Dip it good).

This comes together fast, fits great in my small skillet, and is the perfect appetizer for two mushroom lovers.  Using some of my freezer stash of put up veggies makes this a fast-to-assemble dish.  Just chop everything up finely, sauté it, add the wine, simmer, stir in the cheese and you're done.

Chicken Saltimbocca Stuffed With Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese

I am not the type of person who needs a shower upon waking in order to get my day started.  In fact, it would have been tough when I worked on a dairy farm and rolled out of bed, pulled on my boots, and was in the barn before achieving full consciousness.  This means that I shower at weird times.  (Why am I talking about my shower habits on a food blog?)  Lemme 'splain.

I think pretty well in the shower.  The idea for this recipe came during a late weekend afternoon shower.  I'd already cooked the sweet potatoes for the hash and decided to shower while they were cooling.  I was pondering the rest of the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve.  It came to me--in between the first and second time I washed my face--why not shred a butternut squash?  Why not stick that shredded squash onto a thin piece of chicken, roll it up, and cover it with a sauce?  (I think I ended up washing my face twice because I was distracted debating between grapes and band fundraiser oranges for the sauce).

Then I got out of the shower, dried off etc, and got on my computer.  First, I found this, followed by this.  Then I found this.  Then this.  And finally this.

After mulling all of those over for a while, this is what I ended up making:

Thanks to a comment from Annemarie of Real Food Real Deals, I decided to try rice noodles with this dish.  Depending on the type of chicken broth you use, this recipe could be gluten free.  Despite my utter inability to make it look as easy as in the videos, it was pretty quick to assemble, cooked fast, and tasted great.  I think it would work well for both an impressive Valentine's day meal or a tasty family supper.

And then stay tuned, because I've been busy stuffing shredded butternut squash into muffins and pizza!
I've revamped my Visual Recipe Index! For more ideas on what to do with your butternut squash, click here.

A Valentine's Pizza to Show Your Love (Vegan, Vegetarian, or Omnivores: Pizza Night!)

Love.  In what I hope is the middle of my life, my thoughts on Love are broader than they used to be.  I've always told my kids there is no single person that is the one for each of them.  I mean, if you happen to take a different path one day and not meet that person, well, what then?  I think respect, courtesy, and communication are very important building blocks of love.  (Yes, desire and other things are important too.  On to food.)

Vegetarian option on the left, omnivore option on the right.

One of the ways I show my love for my family is by cooking for them.  I'm not alone in this!  I consider myself fortunate that I also like to cook and am curious about new foods/new recipes, but even if I were just making the same seven staple dinners each week I'd be putting love into each meal.  In fact, when we moved into our home <and I had a Groupon to use> I had the Penzey's Spices slogan made into a wall decal over my kitchen window.

My kids think the font I chose is a bit wonky, and run around saying "Book them tasty food!" Little darlings.

I meet more and more folks who live with, and love, people with different dietary habits.  My friend Lorin at the VeganAsana, wrote an excellent post on this topic.  If you are a vegetarian cooking meat for a carnivore--that action shows your love and respect. If you are a carnivore choosing the vegan buttery spread while doing the family grocery shopping--that action shows your love and respect.  Sitting down to a meal together, a meal that contains a variety of dishes that can work with everyone's dietary choices, sounds simple but really is an expression of love and acceptance of those you love.

Even though I feed a house of omnivores, this pizza is an expression of my love for anyone reading who lives with and cooks for those with different dietary habits.  Like with the bus stop method of home schooling, this is the bus stop method of cooking.  You can stop the pizza where it suits you or your family's dietary habits.  This pizza works for vegans, vegetarians, or beet-curious carnivores.

A mere 1/2 cup of finely shredded beets turns the dough shockingly pink.  I like it.

I freely admit that I made the beet crust purely so I could blog about it. [Having shredded beets put up in the freezer played no small part either.]  I was was thinking it would be something neat for Valentine's day.  Then I remembered the taste of the Beet and Horseradish muffins that will appear on this blog on a future Muffin Monday.  Having had those muffins, I know that my mom was right and beets pair well with horseradish.  Horseradish, in turn, pairs well with roast beef.  So it wasn't a big jump to get a Roast Beef on a Beet Crust Pizza drizzled with Horseradish Cream.  The trickier bit was the flavors in the middle, and I am grateful to the males in my household for that.

My spouse and son kept asking for another pizza with fresh mozzarella, and on the drive home from sled hockey practice one night my son and I created the layers of this pizza.  In our heads, at least.  Now that I know to keep an eye out for the upcoming sell-by dates and snap up balls of fresh mozzarella as they are marked down in the fancy cheese area of the grocery store, I am happy to oblige their desire for fresh cheese.

Thus far we have a shockingly pink beet crust with bright white discs of cheese, and I thought roasted garlic oil would be an excellent sauce in between those layers.  Conveniently, in my fruit and veg freezer, I had a lone packet of caramelized onions next to the roasted garlic so I grabbed that, too.
Here's how this shakes out.

A Valentine's day dish for the vegans you love:

Caramelized Onions and Roasted Garlic Oil on a Beet Crust Flatbread

A Valentine's day dish for the vegetarians you love:

Caramelized Onions, Fresh Mozzarella, and Roasted Garlic on a Beet Crust Pizza

A Valentine's day dish for the omnivore or beet-curious carnivore you love:

Roast Beast Pizza with Fresh Mozzarella and Roasted Garlic on a Beet Crust, Drizzled with Horseradish Cream

Yikes.  That sounds ambitious.  Let's start with the basis of it all--the beet crust.  I prefer making my crust a day or three before use--it stretches so nicely when it's not brand spanking new.