Butternut Squash Gnocchi

It is important to me to eat and cook with local (or better yet, homegrown), seasonal food as much as possible.  I love the seasonal variety it adds to our menu but I mostly like knowing that our food hasn't been shipped from far away and I also love the taste.  We have been using a lot of root vegetables, squash, cabbages, onions and the like in our meal  plans lately along with all our  preserved garden goodies.  This week we enjoyed Jamie Oliver's roasted vegetables again (Love These!).  We used one of our squash for roasted squash bisque and then I decided to try a new-to-us recipe from a Vegetarian Times magazine I was passing on - Butternut Squash Gnocchi (with sage butter, and believe me, Everything tastes better with sage butter).

These were delicious!  I didn't bother putting the cooked squash through a sieve, I just mashed it in a bowl and then added the rest of the ingredients (minus the nutmeg).  Very simple and very tasty.  We ate it alongside a savoy cabbage I had chopped and sauteed with garlic, oil and a bit of soy sauce -simple, quick and yummy.

All this squash eating has us also eating a lot of squash seeds.  Now whenever I bake squash I also bake the seeds at the same time.  I put them in a cast iron fry pan and drizzle a little oil over them and then just sprinkle with whatever herbs or seasonings we feel like - a nice snack to tide us over while dinner finishes cooking.  I think I'll try to find a few more new recipes to see us through this winter season and then, before we know it Spring will be here, with fresh greens, asparagus, nettle, lamb's quarter and lots more.