Funny Sounding Food Night - Forfar Bridies and a Turk's Turban

We had one of those 'what the hell are we going to cook with this random mass of food in my fridge' nights. And we were saved by the culinary genius of my wife. She's wrapped the leftover sausage stuffing from last night's stuffed zucchini in pastry dough to make a kind of forfar bridie (think of it as the Scottish version of a samosa, but baked instead of fried and without the spices). And at the Silver Spring farmer's market we bought the coolest-looking squash I've ever seen, called a Turk's Turban. See image to the left. I thought it was a decorative gourd at first. Turns out you cook them just like acorn squash: cut em in half, bake em for 40-50 minutes, then throw on some butter and brown sugar or maple syrup or honey or whatever floats your boat. Not bad.

Was thinking on how much this whole 100-mile diet thing has opened our eyes to new foods. There are literally dozens of things we had never tried before that we've found we like, and especially winter vegetables since that seems to be creeping up on us. I never ate squash as a child, beyond the odd pumpkin pie. But summer squash and zucchini are household favorites now and we've experimented with all sorts of winter squash: acorn, spaghetti, butternut, hubbard, and now turk's turban. The next big leap is the winter vegetables that neither of us has really ever tried and liked: parsnips, turnips, rutabaga, etc. But I hold out hope. After all, Emily now has a number of cheeses she likes, something that I thought would only happen simultaneous with the apocalypse. So there's gotta be something good to make with rutabagas.