Chili-Lime Roasted Squash Salad

Continuing our health kick, we (well, I) picked out some tasty looking salads for us to munch on in the new year, trying to avoid meat and processed carbs where possible.
 

Our first foray into the salad world was this chili roasted squash salad with a cilantro lime dressing.  I had seen it in the November Martha Stewart Everyday Food Magazine (RIP!) and then again on The Bitten Word, so I thought it was worth a try. Squash (we used the readily available (in Jakarta) kabocha squash, or Japanese pumpkin) roasted with chili powder, lime, cilantro and honey dressing, feta cheese, pepitas (we brought some home from Trader Joe's... I cannot explain to you how much I miss TJ's...), your lettuce of choice (we went with a mesclun mix). 

I thought this was a solid and really easy recipe, but nothing spectacular to write home about (and yet here I am, writing home about it).  I'm not sure what it was missing, but perhaps a little bit of spice?  The chili powder I have is a dark chili powder and it's not too spicy.  Maybe I should have jazzed it up with some cayenne powder...?

Curried Squash, Cauliflower and Apple Soup with Pizza Dough Breadsticks

With 3 days to go before braving I-95 and heading home for the holidays, I found myself trying to find uses for the random assortment of veggies crowding my fridge and counter. Cue curried winter squash/cauliflower/apple soup, served with apple/walnut/goat cheese/pomegranate salad and pizza dough breadsticks.

Loosely based on a couple of recipes, the soup came out pretty well! I took the veggie cues from this one (although I used one kabocha squash, a whole head of cauliflower, and 2 apples) and the spices from this one (plus a couple teaspoons of garam masala). Swirled in some sour cream when I served it.

Then, for the breadsticks, I used leftover pizza dough from the other night, and generally followed these instructions for turning them into twisty breadsticks. I brushed mine with olive oil and sprinkled them with garlic salt. Mine didn't poof up as much as hers did, but that's probably because I was using dough that was several days old. They were tasty anyway!

Kabocha Squash Soup with Limey Corn Relish

I got a kabocha squash from my CSA this week and was looking for a unique way to cook it... I found this recipe on epicurious.com: Calabaza, Corn and Coconut Soup. Good pick!

This is a fun take on squash soup. It's creamy from the coconut milk and sweet from the squash, which is complimented by the limey, bright corn relish you drop in the soup after it's cooked. Yum. Give this a try- I highly recommend it!

I made a couple changes to the recipe: used one Kabocha squash and one delicata squash, two cups of frozen corn, half chicken stock and half water, one can of coconut milk, and a few dashes of Frank's Red Hot to the soup at the end.

I bet it would be even better if I had followed the recipe and used the corn on the cob- the cobs get cooked in the broth with the squash and probably impart some more corn flavor to the soup.