Squash Something

A friend gave us a bag of squash after church on Sabbath.  I had never eaten it before, much less cooked it, but come Sunday morning I started brainstorming to find out what to make with it...  The result was "Squash Something".  It is a recipe that I made up but do not know what to name.  Suggestions are welcome.

Squash from Andrew's garden

Green beans from OUR garden

"Squash Something"

650g squash
120g green beans
4 tomatoes
2 large onions
2 garlic cloves
1 large red capsicum
4 large mushrooms
Salt to taste
Olive oil

Method:
Chop everything up into equal sizes, but crush the garlic.  Drizzle with olive oil and mix.  Pour into a casserole dish and cover.  Bake in the oven until tender.  We ate it with mashed potato, cashew and sunflower cheese, and brown basmati rice.  It was very nice.

Gemista [Greek Stuffed Vegetables]

After eating a greek inspired salad for lunch, I thought it would be great to continue on the theme and assemble some greek food for tea.  Searching the internet, I finally found a recipe that I thought would appeal to my family and that would be authentic.  Interestingly enough, the blog was called Authentic Greek Recipes.

I printed out the recipe and got started.  A few hours later we sat down to eat...

Here is the list of ingredients that I used (slightly different to the original recipe):

8 large ripe tomatoes
2 red capsicums
1 medium round eggplant
12 tablespoons medium-grain brown rice
potatoes to fill in the gaps between the other veggies in the dish (I actually didn't count them all, I just used as many as I could fit)
2 large onions, finely chopped (I tried grating, but was not very successful and the fumes were terrible!)
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 bunch chopped (flat leaf) parsley
1 tablespoon (TBS) chopped mint
olive oil
1 teaspoon (tsp) salt

Additionally, here are the changes that I made to the preparation:

• I threw away all the eggplant insides (full of seeds).
• Before adding the rice to the tomatoes (etc.), I cooked it in an equal amount of water for 15-20 minutes.  
• Briefly blending the tomatoes (the only insides that I salvaged), I ended up with a simliar result as I would have achieved using a food processor.  By briefly blending, I mean turning the blender on and then off again almost immediately.
• Just prior to putting the filling in the veggies, I added a drizzle of olive oil to the filling.
• I oiled the whole dish and the potatoes.
• I did not add salt (or pepper) to the potatoes

The end result was that some people loved it, some people hated it, and some people didn't mind it.  My personal favourite was the stuffed tomatoes.

If you would like to make the recipe for yourself, here is the link to the original: Greek Stuffed Vegetables (Gemista).  Oh, and if you do make it, let me know how you like it by posting a comment! :)

From the garden:
Parsley
Mint

Note: The steamed cauliflower and broccoli were a familiar flavour to add to the different ones, they were not part of the recipe.

Cookies

The other day I made some Macadamia Cookies.  Here is a few photos of the finished product...

They were very yummy.  You can find the recipe to make these macadamia cookies here.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!