Squash Enchiladas

I've come across a few recipes for squash enchiladas in the past couple of years, and my first thought was
 "Really, Squash? In enchiladas?? Weird!"

Everyone I've shared the idea with seems to have the same reaction, with varying degrees of horror and/or "Ew gross!"


But, I'm here to tell you- squash enchiladas are actually really good.
They are surprisingly filling and the sweetness of the squash balances really nicely with the flavors of peppers and garlic and my personal favorite, cumin.
If you have an abundance of squash that you don't know what to do with and are so inclined to try new foods, here is a recipe for you!

Honestly, I've made them different every time, using whatever ingredients I had on hand that I thought would taste good. This last time I made them I liked it better than last time, so I'll share the current favorite recipe. :)


Squash Enchiladas
By Becca Swan
Makes 6 enchiladas

1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
1 cup cooked rice
1 cup corn kernels (I cut mine off the cob but feel free to use fresh, canned or frozen- whatever you have)
2 cups winter squash, cut into 1 inch cubes
shredded cheese for sprinkling (cheddar, monterey jack are especially good)
6 flour tortillas
2 tbsp taco or enchilada seasoning (or your own favorite blend of spices that include cumin, paprika, chili powder, etc.)
sour cream (optional)
Enchilada sauce or salsa (enough to pour over the top of enchiladas)



Heat a pan on med-high, put cooking spray in it or use around 2 tbsp olive oil to grease it.
Add onions and garlic, stir and cook til onions are translucent.
Pour in squash cubes, add salt and pepper, cook for around 5-10 minutes, til the squash starts to soften. Reduce the heat to medium if need be, to keep the squash from burning.
Add rice and corn and seasoning, stir and cook til warmed through.
Remove from heat.

Assemble your enchiladas.
In a 9x13" baking dish, place tortilla, layer squash mixture, cheese and sour cream (if desired) down the middle of the tortilla. Roll tortilla up and place so the loose ends are under the enchilada. Repeat until your pan is full.
Drizzle salsa or enchilada sauce over the top of your enchiladas, then sprinkle some more cheese over them for good measure. :)

I used tomatillo salsa this time and MAN was it good! It added a really nice tang to the dish and I highly recommend it if you like tomatillos. If not, stick with regular enchilada sauce or salsa.
Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes, til cheese on top is melted and slightly browned.
Enjoy with a nice salad or chips and salsa.

If you have people in your family who are skeptical about the squash enchiladas, you can always make a pan of chicken or beef enchiladas as well; that's what we do since my kids and my brothers are not fond of squash at all. :)

Pressing Cider

It's halfway through November already, and getting cold and dreary and decidedly fall/winterish around here.

We had a few hard frosts and it even hailed one day. No snow yet, but it sure is getting cold!

On Saturday, my Great Uncle Gaylord invited us up (he lives next door) to have a cider pressing party and boy was it fun! And COLD! I never knew apple cider could be so cold and delicious!

None of us had really pressed cider before (besides Uncle Gaylord and my Dad) so we all got to learn how.

First, you get some apples.

These are from Gaylord's apple trees. They're "organic" in that they don't have pesticides used on them. :)

From left to right: Ellie, Dad, Ethan, Uncle Gaylord and my youngest brother Scotty

Dad helping Ethan turn the crank on the press

Uncle Gaylord cracking jokes. :)

You put apples into the hopper of the cider press and turn the wheel and it shreds up the apples into a kind of pulpy mess. That falls down into a pressing crate thingy (see how much I know about cider pressing?) and when it's full you slide it over to the press. You put a lid on the pressing crate and then turn the crank to exert pressure onto the crate, which squeezes the cider out into a canning pot.

Tim taking a turn at pressing the cider

Scotty bein' himself. ;)

Then, when the pot is full, you move it over to the straining table and pour it through a strainer. (Or a clean pillowcase, which is what we used.) Squeeze the juice out of the pillowcase and then ladle it into jugs ( a funnel is very helpful at this point!) and Bam! you have apple cider. 

We just leave it raw, we don't pasteurize it or anything, although you have to freeze it if you want it to stay good because it will turn and start fermenting in about 5 days if you don't freeze or can the extra.

What did we do with the leftover smashed apples? Feed it to the cows, of course!
Once the cider was pressed out of the apple bits, we took the pressing crate over and pounded the top out of it, letting the apples fall into a wheelbarrow.

My brother, Brian, pounding out the lid and the apple bits into the wheelbarrow

 Then we dumped the apple bits in the cow field and let the girls have a nice little treat. The kids loved having the cows so close! The cows weren't as excited as the kids. ;)

The cider is SO good! We drank it right as it was dripping out of the pressing crate, into our cups and it was cold and sweet and delicious. 

The weather was frigid too- somewhere in the upper 30's so we had to keep running inside and warming our hands at the woodstove so our fingers wouldn't get so cold they didn't work.  Mine actually got so cold they couldn't bend at one point, so I had to take a break. Squeezing that cider through the pillowcase was a chilly job!

We ended up getting around 12 gallons of  cider, which is more than we expected. We've been enjoying it immensely- warm, cold, putting it in muffins and bread and using it in gravy.  We're saving some for Thanksgiving too, to drink in fancy cups with dinner. :)

I'll be back tomorrow and Saturday with some recipes - it's been a while since I posted any so I'm giving you two- Squash Enchiladas and then Apple Cider Pumpkin Spice muffins!
Have a fabulous Thursday.

Food Waste Friday: Things Have Changed

I haven't participated in FWF for a few weeks, and I've missed it!

The reason I haven't been around??

We moved across the country, from our little house in Tennessee into my parent's big house on two beautiful acres. Long story, but we're glad to be here! :)
Needless to say, there was food waste.
Food waste from us moving, food waste from lunch meat not being refrigerated and beans getting squished into a paste, food waste once we got here to Washington. (State, not D.C.)

I'm in the process of getting my mom and dad's foodstuffs organized (Think overflowing pantry and huge chest freezer with stuff in it from 2009 and condiments in the gigantic fridge expired in 2005...)

So there was a LOT of waste.
Two garbage bags full.
Old meat, corn with freezer burn, blackberries from 3 years ago. Horseradish that should've been thrown out 7 years ago. SEVEN. That's how long I've been married!! It's amazing what can hide in the fridge on the condiment shelf.

I'm trying to get it under control, and get my parents and brother on board with FWF so that they can save some $$ and some food too!

The next thing on the agenda is to write up a menu so that we have a list of meals to pull from- the secret weapon of preventing food waste, along with making meals out of leftovers to further our reduction of wasted meals.

Does anyone have any tips on how to reduce food waste from a family who is used to throwing out this, that and leftovers?
I need help! :)

Thanks in advance!


This post is linked to The Frugal Girl, who is the brains behind all of this food waste documentation.

Banana-Zucchini Bread- A healthy version

It's zucchini season and no doubt if you have zucchini growing in your garden or you've visited the farmer's market or the grocery store lately you've seen it everywhere.
I've seen it on sale like crazy, and I don't have any zucchini plants growing in my garden. I did, but they got eaten by snails or slugs or something. :(

Anyway, I actually found this recipe because I had some bananas that were on the verge of going bad and didn't really feel like freezing them plus I had some frozen zucchini from early spring; that I needed to get rid of (we're working on eating through everything in our freezer) so I thought I'd make some banana/zucchini bread to use it up!

I found the original recipe on Allrecipes.com (click here for the link) but as always, I modified it a bit.
So here's my modified version:

Beat 3 eggs til they are foamy.

Add:

 3/4 cup olive oil,
 1 cup organic sugar,
1 cup grated (and extra juice squeezed out if it's been frozen) zucchini
3 bananas, mashed
1 tsp vanilla

Mix!
I didn't actually mash up the bananas first since I was using my stand mixer- it did the job just fine for me.

Next, add your dry ingredients.
3 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
2 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. allspice
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1tsp salt

Mix again, til everything is well combined.

Pour into two greased loaf pans and stick in a 325F oven for 50 min,

 or until a knife comes out clean when you poke it into the middle of the loaf.
I only used 1/2 cup of oil because 3/4 sounded like too much, but then my bread ended up a bit dry. Not horrible, but I should've just followed the directions there! Or added another egg or something.
I like how it turned out though, minus the slight dryness.
Hubby says it isn't dry, but I think it is just a tad.

We've already eaten one of the loaves, and the other one will probably be gone by tomorrow afternoon.
So if you have some zucchini sitting around waiting to be used, go ahead and make some zucchini bread! :)

Food Waste Friday: It's Friday Already??

Man, I feel like this week has just flown by.

However, we managed not to waste any major food- just a few leftovers from the kid's dinner last night that they didn't eat. (you know, when they take like three bites and then are done and you try and try to get them to eat it but they won't, even though you don't give them any food the rest of the night?) Yeah. Those little bits.

Other than that, no waste!!

Yay!!!

In other news...
Our chickens are just about to start laying eggs and I am SO looking forward to having fresh, free-range eggs to eat! yum!

That's all folks, see you in a few days and hope your weekend is fantastic!!

A Simple Snack Recipe: Stove-Top Popcorn

Hi, I realized a few days ago that it's been awhile since I shared any recipes with you all, so here is a quick, easy, healthy snack that we love to enjoy.
Once you make it, you may never go back to microwaved popcorn. (At least I hope so. That stuff is NOT very good for you.)

If you've ever had old fashioned, stove popped popcorn you know that it is delicious and fluffy and devoid of all of the chemical "butter" you find in microwave popcorn or that gargantuan tub of heart-attack causing movie theater popcorn.

I remember as a kid my mom making huge amounts of popcorn and then we'd salt and butter it and pour it into a paper grocery bag to take to my uncle's football games in the fall. It would be cold and windy and more often than not it would be rainy but with warm woolen blankets and salty, delicious popcorn it was well worth it to sit for a few hours and watch him play until our fingers got numb and our noses got red and my brother and I nearly fell asleep, then we'd head for our nice cozy home and fall into our toasty warm beds.

I love making popcorn for our kids, and they love to help. It's so much fun for them to pick out a few yellow kernels and drop them into the sizzling oil, then when it pops they make a game out of trying to catch the kernels as they pop out, sometimes onto the kitchen floor. ;)

Here's how we make our stove-top popcorn: it's super easy, I don't even measure!


You need:

~A big pot with a lid, preferably a heavy-bottomed one so that the heat is distributed evenly across the pan.
~Oil of some kind. I usually use olive oil because it's healthier than canola and gives the popcorn a nicer flavor.
~Popcorn, of course! If you can, get the organic kind because the regular kind is almost certainly genetically modified. We go back and forth between organic and regular, depending on how much money we have that month.
~Salt or topping of your choice
~A big bowl


The How To:

Put your pan on the stove, turn it up to the highest heat setting and pour enough oil in to cover the bottom of the pan.

Take two or three or four kernels and drop them into the pan. This is a good place for your kids to help, because the oil isn't hot enough yet to burn them.

Leave the lid off, and wait for those kernels to pop.

When they pop, your oil is hot!

I made a mistake here, and put the lid on too early. When I poured in all the rest of the popcorn, it took too long to pop because the pan had to heat back up and I ended up burning a bit of popcorn and not all the kernels popped. So leave the lid off when you put the first few kernels in, so your pan can get really hot!!

Dump in enough popcorn to cover the bottom of the pan, put the lid on (quickly!) and let them pop away!

Shake the pan back and forth on the burner a few times, so that the popped popcorn doesn't burn while the rest of the kernels are still popping.

When the popping slows down to just a few pops here and there (or when you smell it starting to burn!), turn off the heat and leave the lid on for a few more seconds to give those last few kernels a chance to pop and then pour your nice hot popcorn into a big bowl and salt it up and enjoy!

We don't use butter on our popcorn, with the olive oil you don't really have to. It leaves the popcorn nice and flavorful without the extra saturated fat that butter gives you.
 You can sprinkle other toppings on as well, like nutritional yeast for a healthy but cheesy flavor, or cinnamon and sugar for a "dessert" popcorn or whatever else you like. We're boring and just do salt. ;)



This is shared at Frugally Sustainable's Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways. Hop on over and check out the hundred plus other awesome bloggers who've shared cool stuff about homesteading, frugal living and real food cooking!

Root Beer Floats: A Step Down Memory Lane

I remember when I was a kid, sometimes Mom or Dad would go to the store just for a few groceries and then they'd come home with a surprise: MUG root beer and vanilla ice cream!
 We'd fill our cups as full as we could with ice cream, then pour the root beer over it and watch as the beautiful, delicious foam crept up to the edge of the glass (and sometimes over it).
I used to try to get my foam to rise up as high as I could without it spilling over the rim, then slurp it down quickly, before any drops of the delicious dessert would be wasted.
I have such fond memories of it, that whenever I have MUG root beer (which is not often), it makes me want a root beer float. Mom and dad were smart though; there was NO way they were giving us five kids Barq's root beer, with all that caffeine in it! ;)

Last night I was missing Washington and my family a lot, and hubby and I were planning on getting ice cream of some sort anyway, so I requested root beer floats.
Hubby and Ethan went on a "man date" to the store, and when they got home the fun began. :)
They went all out and bought whipped cream and delicious, fresh wonderful Bing cherries from Chelan, Washington too, just for me! My hubby is the best. :)

Side note: if you're ever near Chelan, WA you should go visit, because there are tons of  organic orchards of cherries and peaches and nectarines and apples and apricots and a great waterpark and of course, Lake Chelan, with tons of fun water options there. Definitely worth a trip.

We used Breyers Vanilla ice cream and Virgil's Root Beer for our floats because they don't have any high fructose corn syrup in them and use only natural ingredients. They are SO good together. Man. If you've never had Virgil's, you've never tasted what root beer is supposed to taste like. Try it sometime. (no, I was not paid to say this.)

MMM, I'm not gonna lie. I had two root beer floats because they were THAT good. :)

What is your fondest childhood memory regarding desserts??

Food Waste Friday: Lemon and Chicken

Hello, it's time once again for..








This week we had a few things wasted:

Half a lemon that went all moldy and mushy on me- it went straight into the compost.

Then, a tiny bit of leftover fajita chicken that had sat out for about 3 hours after I cooked it, then I put it in the fridge, but then felt like we shouldn't eat it, just in case. So I threw that away. It was probably one serving worth.

On the good news side of things, I've started grocery shopping weekly again as opposed to twice a month and it seems like we're doing a better job of eating up leftovers and not letting things go bad. I suppose it's because we don't have as many things to eat, so we eat what we have! Not a bad thing at all. :)

Also, I just had to share this picture because it was such a delicious meal:
Grilled BBQ chicken thighs (on sale at Aldi for $2.55!), rice, green beans, cucumbers from our garden and tomatoes from a friend's garden- there's nothing like home grown produce, y'all! It was SO good. And so pretty!

I  hope those of you in the States had a lovely 4th of July, and those of you outside the States had a nice Wednesday as well! ;)


This is linked to The Frugal Girl, who is the brains behind all of this food waste documentation.

Food Waste Friday: Nada!

Hello everyone, and happy Friday!

This week I had NO waste!
I'm so excited!!!!!!

I did give the chickens a few bits of leftover oats and other odds and ends but didn't count that as waste but rather a save since it gives the chickens extra nutrition and saves the scraps from rotting in a landfill.

I didn't get a chance to post last week because it was my birthday, but we did waste some taco meat which I was pretty upset about. We rarely waste meat, but this just sat out in the pan overnight and so into the trash it went. It was probably about a serving or two.

That's it!

This is kind of a boring post...so here are a few pictures of the kid's new favorite pastime.
 :)
They have a small plastic swimming pool, but a huge mud puddle is just so much more fun!

Hope you're having a lovely summer!
It's hot as all get out here, and I'm very much looking forward to fall. These hundred degree + temperatures are just not for me.


This post is shared at The Frugal Girl, who is the brains behind all of this food documentation. :)