The “Real Food” Brownie: A chocolate dessert that is good for you.

Squash for Dinner Part 3! Chili!

Pumpkin chili?
I thought of adding some pumpkin as soon as I smelled the maple from the bacon cooking in the stock pot.

That may sound insane but here is my reasoning: I’ve been reading a lot of squash recipes and baking, roasting, pureeing different varieties. Often maple syrup or honey comes up as a flavour combination with squash. One cooking class, I learned to smell what you’re cooking with and see what flavours are invoked in your head. My squash project has added a new flavour profile to my brain, squash and maple. Another flavour combination is the Three Sisters. This is actually a companion planting method of corns, beans, and squash.
The three crops benefit from each other. The maize provides a structure for the beans to climb, eliminating the need for poles. The beans provide the nitrogen to the soil that the other plants utilize, and the squash spreads along the ground, blocking the sunlight, helping prevent establishment of weeds. The squash leaves also act as a “living mulch”, creating a microclimate to retain moisture in the soil, and the prickly hairs of the vine deter pests. Maize lacks the amino acids lysine and tryptophan, which the human body needs to make proteins and niacin, but beans contain both and therefore maize and beans together provide a balanced diet. From Wikipedia, Three Sisters Agriculture.

Well now that I was going to be adding pumpkin in the chili- did I want to hide it?

Beans on toast!

The mystery ingredient in last week’s CSA box was borlotti beans.
Borlotti beans
Other names: cranberry bean, borlotto, crab eye, roman, romano, rosecoco, saluggia beans, burlotti OR barlotti (misspelling).
A dappled white and red bean related to the kidney and pinto beans. This is a common bean in Italy where it is used for soups and with pasta. Use in any recipe that calls for kidney or pinto beans.(From GourmetSleuth.com)

I cook legumes a lot but I’ve never tried a fresh from the shell bean before. They are incredibly creamy. I passed up the suggestion to make a bean stew and tried out a recipe for “Posh Beans on Toast”.