Grilled Butternut Squash & Peppers--a side, a main, or a meal.

Chunks of grilled butternut squash and bell peppers as a side dish, tossed with grilled sausage for a main dish, and/or combined with pasta for a complete meal.

Just because school is back in session and the leaves are turning it's no time to put away the grill. In fact, grilling winter squash when it looks like Fall and the calendar says it's still summer seems like a good idea. If you want to get all-season about it, I even made this recipe in the Spring, using the tail end of my Strategic Winter Squash Reserve.

What's a Strategic Winter Squash Reserve? I'm glad you asked. It's one of the ways I feed my family from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share all year long. During the season (approximately late May-ish to early October-ish) we eat some of the share and put up the rest for later. One of the easiest vegetables to put up is winter squash. Winter squashes (acorn, buttercup, butternut, pumpkin and spaghetti are most common) are terrific long-storing vegetables. In a cool dark place (the cold corner of my breakfast nook once it stops hitting 90 outside) the squash will keep for months. Many months. Just be sure to look over your squash every few days and use them in a timely manner.

I've revamped my Visual Recipe Index! For more ideas on what to do with your butternut squash, click here.

This recipe follows the Bus Stop method of cooking I've used in previous posts, such as the Potato, Beet and Leek Soup (and How to Make Vegetable Stock). Depending on how far you take this 'bus', you'll make a vegan side dish, a paleo/grain free main dish, or a complete meal for omnivores. Or all three--with a single cooking session.*

Deep Dish Green Tomato & Goat Cheese Pizza

Green tomatoes and goat cheese add fresh flavor to the classic deep dish sausage pizza.

For more recipes using green tomatoes (none of them fried) please see my Green Tomato Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me eating up the farm share, the garden abundance, and what's ripe at the local farmer's market. Want to know How to Use this Blog? Click here.

I think too many people think the only way to eat a green tomato is to fry it.  Not me.  Green tomatoes are a terrific vegetable to play with, and I like them so much I actually canned some last year.  The year before I froze some--and I'm here to tell ya that either way (chopping & freezing or chopping & boiling water bath canning) you can put up green tomatoes and use them year round. Please try them--and not in 'fried green tomatoes' form, either, though the inspiration for the goat cheese in this pizza came from a grilled goat cheese and fried green tomato sandwich. I suppose fried green tomatoes are good for something after all.

Now, I'll have more to say about green tomatoes next week, when I get my Green Tomato Curry post up. In the meantime, I spent the past 36 hours canning 7 quarts of tomato sauce from the (red) paste tomatoes in my garden plus 14 pints of salsa from a tiny fraction of the canning tomatoes I bought from our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share. I also did this:

And between all the canning and all the walking, I'd rather just get this recipe up and go to bed.
It's a tasty pizza, and an easy spinoff of my How Not To Make Lou Malnati's Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza method. [Got red tomatoes? Make that. Vegetarian? I'm working on it. I just love that disc of sausage too much to think of alternatives.]

Tamale Pie with Hatch Chiles

This one pan gluten free meal combines beef and vegetables with cheese under a cornbread crust.

Full Disclosure: I've never eaten real authentic tamale pie before, though I have eaten real tamales* and assisted in the Big Production that goes into making them. I confess I first got the recipe for tamale pie off the bag of a bag of cornbread mix. It called for cans of chili, shredded cheese, and packages of cornbread mix. I fixed it while my spouse and I were still in the first throes of living as man and wife [we'd been married for a while, but it took us a long time to actually live in the same country] and it was fast, easy, and tasty.

This recipe is not quite as fast as emptying a few cans into a skillet, but it's close.

After I got more adventurous in cooking, I started making tamale pie using my own meat mixture, and then later using my own cornbread.  Ever since we joined a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share, I'm constantly looking for ways to add additional vegetables into familiar dishes.  You can never have too many vegetables (unless your farm share pick up is the day after tomorrow and you've still got two crispers full of beets and kale veggies).

Last summer, before Butch came into my freezer, I managed to combine chiles from New Mexico, beef from Michigan, and corn from Delaware along with patty pan squash and red onions from Ohio into a tamale pie.  We'd returned from a beach vacation in time to walk down the street to the local grocery store and grab a couple of quarts of freshly roasted Hatch chiles.  I couldn't wait to get started on salsa verde (my usual use for Hatch chiles) so I chopped up chiles and used them in both the filling and the topping for this dish. The kids and I enjoyed the tamale pie so much I put it into the rotation, not that I have much of a rotation what with trying new things all the time, but still. It was a keeper. This is a tasty way to add some summer veggies + ground beef into a one pot meal.

Lately you may have noticed that I've been using lots of Hatch chiles from New Mexico, which 'tis true are not local to me here in Ohio.  Aside from the fact that these chiles taste good--and I don't have to do the roasting--New Mexico has a soft spot in my heart. I've been to New Mexico on vacation, twice, and got married there each time. I married the same guy [we forgot to take photos the first time, or invite our folks, so a re-do was appropriate].  It's not a bad state to get married in--you just needed $25 cash and a photo ID, the minimum age was 13 years old, and my marriage was recognized by the rest of the country. What's not to like? And, as a bonus, they grow tasty chiles there--though as far as I know I've never eaten a Hatch chile in New Mexico. Perhaps if we get hitched again . . . though my spouse would not appreciate a 3rd anniversary to remember.

For more recipes using Hatch chiles, please see my Hatch Chile Recipe Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For even more ideas using all kinds of peppers, from mild bell to spicy chiles, check out my friend Kristy's site JalapeñoMania. On my FB page I'm sharing recipes from other bloggers, and I'm pinning good stuff all over my Pinterest boards. Wanna know how to use this blog? Click here.