Filling Time: TwinLife Empty-Nesting

My current kitchen routine relies on my local farm box. This past week it warned me that I should expect a whole lot of summer squash. I dismissed the email until I opened my box… and that’s when I knew I needed to dig deep into everything I’ve learned about food and cooking.

Fourteen years ago I had a health scare that forced me out of my processed food pantry and into real food cooking. I had made it into my mid-thirties by faking my way through a kitchen, and, if I’m honest, my specialty back then was a pasta bake that I discovered when I found a “no cook, just add water, sauce, and bake” pasta. I only topped that dinner when I learned how to turn a crescent roll into a burger pie, something my husband absolutely loved! The burger pie still shows up now and again in my dinner prep (and I’ve figured out how to make it gluten free), but my reliance on pre-made or easy prep pantry items has seriously diminished over the years. I’ve learned a lot about how our bodies react to what we put into them, and I try – despite all the temptations to make it easier/better/tastier – to eat healthy and make my body happy.

I’ve danced the line between hard core (e.g., making my own almond milk and turning the leftovers into almond meal) and a full week of takeout every night (usually during baseball season). I cannot say that I am consistently great with my diet, but the two constants I’ve had over the last decade are (1) I eat gluten free and never knowingly cheat (and I KNOW if I get glutened accidentally), and (2) I have tried to keep a relationship with an organic, grass-fed company for both veggies and meat. #1 is all on me, and it’s non-negotiable. I know better, feel better, do better without gluten. I am (likely) Celiac, something I wish I had known earlier in my life.

#2 is harder, as access to companies that can financially commit to organic and grass-fed farming has varied over the years. Because I can’t always have perfection, I choose real over perfect whenever I can. This is why I always have a farm box, despite their commitment to organic farming. A farm box gives me challenges in meal prep that I have come to welcome, and it forces me to prep with real food in mind.

Every week I get ingredients I may not have picked up at the grocery store. It forces me to learn in the kitchen. Sometimes, I get way more of one ingredient than I would have ever purchased. This past week it was summer squash. Over the years, I have leaned into various forms of squash to add as a side, make noodles, or become “squasage,” my version of hashbrowns with sausage with the potatoes replaced by squash. I once made zucchini bread/muffins, but that wasn’t a hit so I filed those recipes. 

This past week, my farm emailed to say that summer squash was rampant. I didn’t actually realize how many squash would be in my box despite this warning. I’m going to be honest. I will eat the “noodles” and the side of squash. I might be able to get my family to eat some squasage. But there is no way we were eating the rampant squash that showed up last week without some new ideas.

Enter ChatGPT. I could write an entire post on how I have been experimenting and using AI to help me solve problems (that’s more a work issue than a personal life issue so not necessarily for this blog), but this conundrum is the perfect example of how AI has helped me in my personal life. I simply asked it to give me five recipes I could use with an abundance of squash.

One recipe I had never seen before or considered was fritters. It sounded good, so I tried it. It WAS good. It was so good that I vacuum-sealed some to give to my mom, who also thought it was good and named them squashcakes.

All this to say in the spirit of FillingTime, I’m not a chef, and I don’t want to fill time with cooking. It’s something I’ve had to learn to do, but it’s not something I love for the art of it. In this instance, however, I was pleased to tackle the puzzle and come up with a solution that was pretty darn yummy. Maybe, if I approach time in the kitchen as a problem to be solved, I will not only fill time, but become a better chef!