Diet Friendly Fast Food

A few years ago I shared  Al's Famous Hngarian Cucumber Salad, and that amazing recipe from my friend Al has been a huge hit with everyone who tries it.  When I made that salad with Al, we talked about cooking together again, but I'm sorry to report that it's taken us nearly two years to tackle another Hungarian dish together.  Then I saw Al and his girlfriend Judy at a party recently and we made a plan for them to come over and make Hungarian Summer Squash with Sour Cream, Paprika, and Dill.  This Hungarian dish uses a combination of  zucchini and yellow squash with all those Hungarian flavors I like so much, and it turned out to be just as good as the cucumber salad.  We had a great time making it a few days ago, and if you have summer squash in the garden, you must try this recipe!

My name is Kalyn and I am a butternut squash addict!  I inherited this butternut squash infatuation from my Grandma Denny; every fall Grandma would hack apart giant butternut squashes from her garden, scrape out the seeds, and wrap pieces in foil and bake them in the oven.  When it was done we'd eat the squash mashed up with lots of butter, salt, and pepper.  Now I'm more likely to cut the squash in cubes and roast it with olive oil, but pretty much any way you cook it, I love the savory flavor of butternut squash.  Whether you're already a confirmed fan of this most popular of winter squashes or trying it for the first time, you can't go wrong with one of these Ten Easy and Amazing Vegetarian Recipes Using Butternut Squash.  (And if you have more good recipe ideas for butternut, let us know about them in the comments.)

(Updated with better photos and step-by-step instructions, August 2014)  One of the wonderful things about having summer squash in your vegetable garden is that soon you'll have so much of it you feel perfectly justified in picking them when they're tiny, similar to the baby squash you get in the fanciest of restaurants. I first posted this wonderful recipe for Easy Roasted Baby Summer Squash with Feta and Thyme back on 2007 when I had an abundance of baby squash from my garden, but now that I don't have a garden at the new house (yet!) I buy the packages of baby squash from Costco to make this. If you don't have a garden or a Costco membership you can still make this recipe with larger squash that are cut in strips.  Roasting the squash with fresh thyme concentrates the flavor in vegetables in the most lovely way, but dried thyme will also work fine for this recipe.

I re-did the photos for this recipe with my niece Kara and her adorable four-year-old daughter Quinn.  It had been a long cooking day and Quinn was getting tired of entertaining herself, so I grabbed a kid-safe knife and enlisted her to help cut the baby squash in half.  Quinn has pretty strong food preference, as most kids do at that age, and the whole time we were cutting them up she kept saying "I hate zucchini."  But when the finished dish was ready, she surprisingly agreed to take a bite, and even more surprisingly, she liked it and ate a couple of pieces.  So if you have kids who won't eat their vegetables, maybe getting them to help cook will help!

It's January 1, and I always love the promise the new year brings of better things to come.  And this January is bringing a new mobile-friendly design and a better way to find recipes by diet type for Kalyn's Kitchen, so I'm excited about that.  Happy New Year to all my readers and friends!

Although I usually start each month with the round-up of Deliciously Healthy Low-Carb Recipes from the previous month, I wanted to start the new year with a brand new recipe.  This Low-Carb Mock Lasagna Spaghetti Squash Casserole is something that really knocked our socks off when we tested the recipe, and if you're in the need of some low-carb comfort food, I promise this will hit the spot.

(Autumn Harvest Soup was updated with better photos in November 2014.)

Sometimes recipes that just come together out of whatever's on hand turn out to be some of my favorites, and this Autumn Harvest Soup with Butternut Squash, Kale, and Farro (or Brown Rice) is one I came up with when I had butternut squash and kale and I'd been craving Farro, an ingredient I've loved ever since I tried it in Farro with Mushrooms. The butternut, kale, and farro combination here turned out to be wonderful, but if you wanted a gluten-free version you could make this with brown rice, which would also be very tasty.