Blue Cheese

Butternut Squash-Mushroom Arugula Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing

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Recipe dedicated to my friend Lisa November, whose presence reminds me to pursue vegetarian dishes!

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When I first made this pretty fall recipe, I posted a junky quick photo to facebook with the words, “Did they tell you to bring a salad to Thanksgiving dinner?” My longtime food blogging and fb friend, Mary, piped up that no one in HER family would ever ask someone to bring a salad!!!…and…she’s mostly right. On the other hand, fine Minnesota friend Lani quipped, “I’m saving this!” So, the jury’s out. For now. Salad, however, really is not the first thing we think of for Thanksgiving, is it? (Didn’t we used to have jello salads? Sure, we did. Long ago and far away. For years and years. Mine had cranberries, apples, and pecans in it. I’ll bet some people still make them.) Thanksgiving is all about turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, vegetable casseroles, rolls and butter, pie, and all things crispy on the outside and tender on the inside–including mac and cheese, they say, though I wouldn’t know. (I do make a first course vegetarian soup lately in a feels-like almost useless, spineless effort to serve a curated meal.) It’s also about feeling thick as an ugly tick and wondering if you should just live on cold pumpkin pie, spiked hot tea, aspirin, and Tums the next day. Which is my way of saying that a little fresh something or other isn’t going to hurt anyone and could be the one thing you go back for when it’s time for seconds. And, playing the grandma card here, some fiber might be exactly what’s needed alongside all that mushy food and free-flowing wine. There. Well, now that that’s out of my system, you can serve this sweetish, peppery, briny, “meaty,” salad featuring butternut squash, mushrooms, and arugula anytime. But if you serve it at Thanksgiving, you’ll be happy!

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FRIDAY FISH: Salmon and Vegetables on Two-Cheese Tabasco Grits

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This week is the start of my once-a-year FRIDAY FISH series. Since 2015, I’ve each spring been posting six fish or seafood recipes, one for each Friday in Lent, the season of thoughtful observance leading up to the death and resurrection of Jesus on Easter. Whether or not you follow any sort of faithful journey, you can still get some new ideas for cooking fish–who doesn’t need those? For grins and giggles — I think some of these meals qualify as fun— and to see what’s happened in other years, click on FRIDAY FISH in the topics cloud or type “Friday Fish” into the search box. To give you a few ideas, I’ve included in this post photos and links for some favorite FRIDAY FISH posts from the last couple of years.

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Salmon on Two-Cheese Tabasco Grits

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Sometimes dinner just looks like a party!

You either love grits or you hate them. They’re one of those kinds of things. If you grew up eating them, as did I, they’re comfort food par excellence — we so need comfort food now — whether buttered and tucked under a big plate of eggs over easy with spicy patty sausage or baked up all cheesy in a casserole dish for the Thanksgiving or any other buffet. They do not, as some folks will insist, taste like paste. (I always liked paste myself.) The trouble has come with the advent of instant grits, which while technically kinda-sorta grits, are nothing compared to the pot of goodness made with stone-ground grits that take longer to cook and definitely need more attention than mashed potatoes. I’d just as soon skip grits if they’re instant, but I’m sure they have their place for folks camping with a bunch of kids demanding a hot breakfast 10 minutes ago.

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