Sunday Night Dinner -- Posh Squash

Sunday night dinner growing up meant dinner at my grandparents' house. Dub and Brownie were married for 60 years and we went to dinner there almost every Sunday that I can remember. That's also where I remember having birthday dinners and holiday dinners until my grandparents were well into their 80s. My grandmother died in 2004 and my grandfather died in 2007. I am so grateful that I had them in my life for so long and miss them terribly.

Over the past few years, I've been digging around the family tree. I got hooked on that show "Who Do You Think You Are," signed up for an ancestry.com membership and started snooping around. The last couple of months have brought great dividends from this research. I'm now connecting with cousins I didn't know I had and we're sharing all sorts of information on my grandmother's family line.

Tonight, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner and staring into my fridge, I saw several yellow squash that had come from my CSA share. I could only think of one thing to do with it -- make my grandmother's Posh Squash. This is a great way to use up a few of those leftover squashes before they get squishy and gross. It's a nice, homey, satisfying casserole that will work well with just about anything. I roasted a few boneless, skinless chicken pieces to have with my dinner.

You'll need:

2 cups cooked yellow squash (I used two squash, sauteed with 1/4 of a large onion that I'd diced and cooked in olive oil).
2 T sugar
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 beaten egg
1/2 stick butter, melted
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
salt and pepper (small pinch of each)

Preheat oven to 350. Cook squash. Mix together other ingredients in a bowl.  Once the squash is cooked, add it to the mixture and toss to combine. Pour into a greased casserole dish (I used an 8x8 baking pan, sprayed with cooking spray) and bake for 25 minutes.

Optional topping -- top with 1/2 cup toasted pecans. Now, if I were to embellish this a little, I think it would be good with either a bread crumb or a ritz cracker topping of some sort. Maybe I'll try that next time.

Tonight's dinner -- roasted chicken, steamed green beans and posh squash. This one's for you, Brownie.

A little nosh

I got a call that my sister was planning to visit me for the weekend. The weather in Cleveland has been BEASTLY hot. I started to plan what we could have for a little nosh. She was arriving a little late, so I didn't really want to do a lot of cooking (two reasons, didn't want to have a big meal very late and, mostly, it was too frippin' hot in my house to cook). I started digging through my fridge and freezer and looked for a few things to prepare.

1 -- Ol' Faithful -- Stinky Cheese. Can't go wrong with a nice, stinky blue cheese. Procured a wedge of a nice buttermilk blue.

2 -- Carb element -- Stinky cheese needs a carb delivery element. Procured some sea salt pita chips from Trader Joe's and got a loaf of french bread out of my freezer (which I bought during a church bake sale -- fundraiser for the parlor renovation). I grilled the bread on my grill pan, using a little olive oil for some extra flavor.

3 -- Salt element -- Olives. My particular favorite is picholine. I'm not a big black olive fan, but I adore these little picholines.

4 -- Veggie options -- Took a few minutes to consider my options. I had some pretty radishes, which I dolled up with butter and sea salt. I'd actually never had that before until about a month ago and my world has been changed. Cherry tomatoes, yellow ones, from my farm share, would look nice on my cheeseboard. I wanted a dippy thing of some sort, so I made a pea dip using english peas (one bag of peas I'd frozen, supplemented with a bag of frozen petit pois from the grocery store), ricotta, lemon and mint. (recipe courtesy of Michael Symon). I liked this dip, although next time, I would try making my own ricotta (which doesn't sound difficult) and I would prefer fresher peas. There was a real difference between the batch I froze on my own and the ones from the megamart.

By the time my sister arrived, I had assembled a nice little nosh for us to have with a glass of wine and start our sisterly weekend.