clean food Archives

Whoop, it’s almost that time! I love, love, love Thanksgiving for a ton of reasons, but mostly for getting to eat dinner as a family, that start of cooler weather, and lots and lots of side dishes. Little bites of lots of food makes me a happy, happy turkey!

I knew exactly which cookbook I wanted to bake from this year. I pulled Terry Walters Clean Food off of the cookbook shelf and flipped to the fall table of contents. It was a toss up between two butternut squash recipes, but ultimately, the Butternut Squash Casserole won.

I’m such a sucker for simple ingredients!

The recipe was a little more labor intensive that I had anticipated – LOTS of chopping. However, if I hadn’t doubled the recipe, I don’t think it would have been that bad.

The casserole was sizzling its little heart out when I pulled it out of the oven. I sampled a piece and thought it was tasty. I had my uncle give it a whirl and he suggested that I add a little salt. It’s amazing what the tiniest bit of salt can do! The maple syrup and cider bump up the natural sweetness of the squash just a notch, the red onion adds tang, and the toasted almonds add texture. Overall, I think this dish comes together quite nicely!

I do not think this recipe stands a chance in being the favorite amongst all of the over-sweetened, over-creamed, over-salted dishes that dominate a traditional Thanksgiving Day table; however, if I were completely in charge of a holiday menu, I wouldn’t think twice about including this casserole again.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your families!

In all honesty, I started the morning thinking the most exciting thing about V-day 2011 was going to be the submission of my itemized taxes. Then I thought to myself, if Terry Walters (my foodie hero) has an easy chocolatey, Valentines appropriate dessert, I’ll allow myself to get in the holiday spirit.

It doesn’t get much more Valentines than ‘Chocolate Lover’s Tart’.

I read down the list of ingredients and determined I had enough like ingredients in my pantry for this to be a pretty cheap treat.

Gluten-free all purpose flour instead of brown rice flour, olive oil instead of canola oil, and peanut butter instead of cashew butter. I also had cocoa powder, pure maple syrup, and vanilla on hand.

The only items left to purchase? Tofu and pecans.

This recipe tops the list of most simple baked goods ever created in my kitchen.

And I bought this handy dandy tart form at Ikea for $7.99!

I knew it would be good because I couldn’t stop eating the tofu batter while the pecan crust was in the oven. But… I waited til I arrived at Val’s house to test it out the finished product. O-M-Geee! So much chocolatey goodness! This will be my go-to guest dessert for parties from this point forward.

Side note: If you use gluten-free vanilla extract, you can add this recipe to your gluten-free recipe collection.