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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Roasted Butternut Squash with Crispy Sage Leaves

November 24, 2013 by Mary 17 Comments

Butternut squash with crispy sage leaves in a white serving bowl.

I love butternut squash. I will be serving a butternut squash and bourbon soup for Thanksgiving as a first course. That recipe, is of course in my e-cookbook. (That soup is bowl-licking good. In fact, I just finished making it for Thursday – delish!) But this past week, I made one of my favorite recipes for a side dish – Roasted Butternut Squash with Crispy Sage Leaves. You roast the squash with onions, put on some good honey three quarters of the way into the roasting period and then top it with some browned butter and crispy sage leaves. It’s the perfect fall dish!

This past week, The New York Times dining section talked about how you must have something orange on your table for the Thanksgiving feast. I have my sweet potatoes with maple syrup and ginger, but you could easily have this dish too, if you’re making a different soup, as you wouldn’t want to repeat the vegetable in the meal.

Here’s my recipe to make and serve with LOVE.

ROASTED BUTTERNUT SQUASH WITH CRISPY SAGE LEAVES – serves 6

One butternut squash – 2.75 – 3 lbs. – peeled, seeded and cut into 1” chunks
One large yellow onion, cut into 1” chunks
2 tbs. olive oil
Salt
Fresh ground pepper
2 tbs. honey
4 tbs. butter
36 large fresh sage leaves, washed and thoroughly dry

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine squash and onion on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle on the olive oil, sprinkle on salt and pepper to taste. Toss all together thoroughly and roast in the oven for 30 minutes. Take pan out and toss again. Drizzle on honey and return the pan to the oven for 10 – 15 minutes more, until the squash is fork tender.

When squash is nearly done, melt the butter in small skillet or saucepan until really hot. Throw in the dry sage leaves and stir until butter is browned and leaves colored a bit.

Transfer squash to shallow bowl, so you have more surface area on top. Drizzle on the browned butter and distribute the crispy sage leaves. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

 

Filed Under: Sides, Vegetables Tagged With: browned butter, crispy sage leaves, honey, perfect fall dish, roasted butternut squash, Thanksgiving side dishes

Remembering Harriet

August 7, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Her outlook on life was always positive. If my kids broke something or something didn’t turn out the way I wanted it too, she’d loudly say, “NEVERMIND, it’ll all work out.” Or, “Nevermind, it’s replaceable.” Her attitude was: move on, no big deal, don’t dwell on it. She was right!

She had a wonderful way of decorating all of her homes, little funny things all over. She always had a small lamp on the kitchen counter with a beautiful simple glass jar full of honey underneath it. First of all, having a low light source in your kitchen is different and provides such warmth. I made sure to have that in my little temporary apartment. And then, having the light above the honey made it absolutely glow. In her den in the large NJ home, she placed a chair and footstool, smack dab in the middle of the room, sideways in front of the fireplace and facing the view of the city. A bold positioning that made perfect sense, but definitely quirky – definitely Harriet!

Dish cloths with clothes hanging scenes, clothespins to close chip bags, stores of tipsy olives for her vodkas, these things completed her kitchen. She drank her vodkas out of Simon Pearce glasses in every house. We liked them so much, we made sure to get some for us for our country house. One burner on her stove would never light the normal way. She’d take a skillet and give it one hard bang and voila, it would light. She loved to put an apron on me and then arrange a dish towel through the waist tie a certain way – her way – which she insisted was best.

And one of the best things she taught me and said over and over again while we were moving back into the city, “Don’t second guess yourself, Mary.” I keep hearing her saying that to me often.

We are in Vermont now, vacationing with my two brothers and their wives. My brother Steve has a beautiful home overlooking Crystal Lake. Harriet loved her big old house in Dorset. We have so many happy memories from there, skiing in the winter and relaxing in the summer.

Love you Harriet and miss you.

Ancram Backyard painting

Harriet’s favorite painting that I did

The loons on our cocktail cruise on Crystal Lake, Vermont.

The loons on our cocktail cruise on Crystal Lake, Vermont.

 

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: decorating, hanging clothes, hanging sheets, Harriet, honey, lamps in the kitchen, lighting, quirky, saying goodby, Simon Pearce, tipsy olives, Vermont, vodka

Happy Valentine’s Day!

February 14, 2012 by Mary Frances Leave a Comment

Valentine's Day Sweethearts and a card.

So tonight, what will you be doing? I’m not a big fan of going out in NYC. The restaurants are always packed and besides, I’d rather serve my own LOVE-filled food at home!

I’m planning on making a veal chop recipe with grapes, honey and sage. It’s a very memorable dish that I made years ago and I really haven’t repeated, quite frankly, because veal is so expensive. But tonight, it will be just the two of us so I figure I’ll go for it!

Now Zach (23) is still living at home with us and he needs a place for his dinner with his girlfriend. So I suggested a candle light dinner in our office conference room with food brought in. Sounds pretty good – right? They’ll be alone. I just need to get the conference room in shape from all the editing and packing for the move that we’ve been doing.

When the kids were little, I would always make these heart cookies that my mother used to make for us. They are an oatmeal based cut-out cookie, that you sandwich two together and then ice all over with a buttercream frosting. They are really good and get better with age as the butter soaks into the cookies. But as you can imagine, they are a ton of work. My oldest son, had us all over for dinner on Sunday night at his apartment in Williamsburg, and was asking about the cookies. With the move, I don’t think I’ll get to them this year.

It was wonderful to have dinner at our older son’s home, particularly after the full day of packing we did at the office. Zach helped us on Sunday and both boys helped on Saturday. (We are blessed with great kids.)

The dinner was a delicious chicken tagine with homemade chick peas and farro instead of cous cous (much better) and served with a mixture of mustard greens and kale, wilted under the broiler, and then tossed with a dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar! Divine!!

To all you young moms out there, this is what can happen if you serve your kids great fresh food cooked with LOVE. They will want to continue the tradition and even step it up a notch! Our older son’s most recent purchase – the French Laundry cookbook from Thomas Keller! I don’t even have that one and it is gorgeous!!

Happy Valentine’s Day to you all!

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: chicken tagine, French Laundry, French Laundry cookbook, grapes, honey, kale, mustard greens, sage, Thomas Keller, Valentine's Day, veal chops

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Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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