GRID magazine is the best! If you live in the Philadelphia area and haven’t checked it out yet, it’s definitely worth a look. The magazines are available for fee at many local cafés and stores or you can subscribe for $20/year. GRID magazine highlights stories about making Philadelphia a more sustainable city—from food to power to clothes to architecture. They also feature advertisements from like-minded businesses across the city (which I actually read and find very useful!). It is an extremely well-written and well-produced magazine, so check it out!
In their November 2009 edition, GRID featured a recipe for Barley Pilaf Stuffed Squash by Tara Mataraza Desmond. I didn’t have all of the ingredients on hand, so I made up my own version of the recipe and it turned out great! Here’s my interpretation:
2 small butternut squash, halved and seeds removed
1 T. olive oil
6-8 white mushrooms (or other small mushrooms), finely diced
1/2 c. short grain brown rice
1/2 c. beef broth
1/2 c. water
4 oz. sweet Italian sausage
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small shallot, minced
1 T. chopped fresh sage (about 4 large leaves)
1/4 c. dried cranberries, chopped
2 T. balsamic vinegar
sea salt and fresh ground black pepper
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
- Rub insides of squash with 1 T. oil, season with salt and pepper, and place cut side down in a large roasting pan. Roast 45 minutes to 1 hour, until squash is tender.
- While squash is cooking, combine rice, beef broth, and water in a small saucepan. Heat to boiling over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low and simmer until all the liquid is absorbed (about 40 minutes).
- When rice is almost finished cooking, remove sausage casings and brown loose sausage in a skillet over medium heat, breaking apart sausage into small pieces as it cooks. Add garlic, shallot, sage, cranberries, and mushrooms, and cook 2 minutes.
- Add cooked rice to skillet along with vinegar and stir to combine. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
- When squash is tender, remove from oven and stuff cavities with rice mixture. Serve with excess pilaf and sautéed greens for a mouthwatering meal!
Found you! I’m looking forward to seeing your parents and Merry at Urbana 09.
All my love to you and Merry Christmas!
xxx, Elizabeth
By: misselizabennet on December 25, 2009
at 1:48 pm
Hi Joyia:
Your mother told me about your blog — and from time to time I have visited. The Barley Pilaf stuffed squash looks beautiful. I did have a thought I wanted to share — I noticed that your recipe includes beef broth, I am curious as to whether you have given much thought to the use of this ingredient?
You could just as easily substitute vegetable broth (Rapunzel Bouillons are fantastic!!) and then not only would this recipe be more inclusive for more people (vegetarians, those trying to reverse or prevent heart disease for example). On the health side — there is nothing important nutritionally that using beef broth contributes over vegetable broth to this recipe, plus it carries additional risks of E coli, mad cow disease, unhealthy fats, and environmenatl toxins (always more concentrated higher up the food chain). From an environmental perspective, cows are completely decimating western range lands, a pound of beef uses 2500 gallons to produce it, and cows are tremendous producers of greenhouse gasses. It takes about ten times more land to feed a population on beef then it does to feed them on plant foods.
I do hope that you will look into this issue further, your blog is such a cool idea, beautifully done and has the chance to inspire so many, and I gather from other things you have written that you care a great deal about environmental, health and justice issues — so I hope that you will explore all this further.
I wish you well!
JoAnn
By: JoAnn on January 18, 2011
at 11:19 am