The Fall Favorite Pumpkin Couscous

I love colors in my food. In fact,the more colors the better. There is a time and place when a simple palette is necessary, whether that be a quick piece of toast with a slab of peanut butter as you run out to start your day, or a uncomplicated apple to soothe your tortured hunger during a lecture...there are times when one's life is so complicated that the food must only act as a forerunner to help one get through the various events we must combat each day.

BUT NOT TODAY. Today, we shall feast on an ambitious array of ingredients that beautifully harmonize one another in one plate, 'The Fall Favorite Pumpkin Couscous.' Interesting name for a dish? Well, not really. I entered a food competition last fall with best friend Liv, and the secret ingredient was a pumpkin. We had to do something out of the ordinary, and make it vegan for extra points, so we decided to just play around with a bunch of ingredients that would shock the masses, yet hit that soft spot and force them to realize, "Its so wrong...yet so incredibly right!" Liv put two and two together and came up with the name.

Well, this dish kind of speaks for itself, so I will not narrate the day any further or you will be reading this food blog all day. Here ya go!

Ingredients:

-2 small pumpkins

-1.5 Cups Dried Mango

-1 box of whole wheat couscous

-1 onion

-Cinnamon

-Ginger

-Salt

-Basil

-3 Cups Raw Spinach

-3 Large Carrots

-Olive Oil

-Agave

-Soy Sauce

-Peanut Butter

The Steps:

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

2. Cut the pumpkins in half, and remove the seeds and save them in a bowl.

3. Place the pumpkin halves face down in a pan filled with 1 inch of water. Let the pumpkin cook in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until all the way cooked. (It only took my pumpkins a little less than 20 minutes to be very cooked, but I have a ve

ry old oven that likes to get hotter than it really says.)

4. Boil 2 cups of water in a small pot with the dried mango. Once at a boil, turn down the heat to low, sprinkle ginger in top, turn heat

off and let sit.

5. Cook the couscous either in a rice cooker or over the stove. Before cooking it, sprinkle a lot of ginger, salt, pepper, andbasil to flavor the bland taste.

6. Once the pumpkin is cooled, cut the skin off. The pumpkin will most likely remove from the skin very easily. Chop the cooled pumpkin in

to 1 inch by 1 inch cubes.

7. Wash the saved pumpkin seeds, and remove all pulp. Let them sit in water for at least an hour. Place the seeds on a baking sheet and coat them with olive oil. Sprinkle garlic salt, brown sugar, and cinnamon on them. Let them bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until all the way cooked.

8. Chop up your onions and slice your carrots. Heat a pan on high with olive oil and caramelize and cook the carrots together. Sprinkle somegarlic powder and basil over them. Once cooked, add about two tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons of agave, and 1 tablespoon of peanut butter. Stir in the raw spinach, it will cook down. Turn the heat on low.

9. Remove Mango from heat and chop into smaller chunks. Add to the stir-fry mixture.

10. Season the pumpkin with salt, pepper, cinnamon, and a little bit of brown sugar. Do this my sprinkling everything over the chopped pieces and make sure to rub all of the flavor in.

11. Add the pumpkin to the stir-fry mixture and combine everything over low heat.

12. In a large serving pan, stir together the stir-fry, couscous, and cooked pumpkin seeds.

This makes a great side-dish or perhaps main course. Though we did not win the over-all competition, in our hearts, Liv and I knew that we had created an extremely sustainable and vegan dish, using only ingredients I already had in my pantry and refrigerator. There were not any leftovers, so I guess the audience felt the same way as us! Enjoy this whimsical and healthy dish!

Green and Orange

My favorite colors are green and orange. In terms of food, personal encounters, and mere aesthetic pleasure, it is so obvious as to why these color rein supreme to the rest of them. I am not saying that all other colors are not great...oh no, I mean that would completely eliminate so many varieties of heirloom tomatoes. But seriously, all of my absolute favorite foods are either green or orange. Mangos, pumpkin, spinach, acorn squash, butternut squash, oranges, cucumbers, zucchini, cabbage, asparagus, sprouts, avocados, carrots....the list goes on! There are so many dynamic possibilities centered around these two colors, and yet one can always rely on these two colors for the simplest of snacks. Believe me, when times get hard, I have no time, and I simply lack the energy to exert any creativity on a wok, nothing hits the spot like a beautifully unevenly shaped carrot paired with some sugar snap peas.

But today, I am taking it further than food. Now just to warn you, I may be approaching some greatly loaded symbolic territory, or I may just narrate to you all of the encounters that have navigated my inclinations towards these colors...either way I am going to talk to you about these colors.

First of all, both of these colors are not of the prime variety. Each derive from yellow, and get their individual character from another prime, green being blue, orange being red. This opens up the door to my liking of all of these colors as well. Coming directly from the three prime colors, green and orange are pure, beautiful, natural...just how most of us like a whole mess of things.

Green and I have a long and lasting relationship. Like any child in her prime youth, I spent a lot of time in trees and on grass. There was an inevitable liking I had towards the color and I did not ignore it. For me, green symbolized freedom, fun, purity, and love. During this time, the trees never stopped growing, the forest always extended deeper, and the grass would always turn back green again. Now having experienced some let downs and realized some harsh truths, I am very well aware that trees die, men cut down forests, and sometimes buildings are built over the grass. With that said, I am also aware that dead trees are part of an undeniable cycle and new ones grow in its place, men also protest other men cutting down forests, and somehow humans always make their way back to walking barefoot on raw grass. Nothing can replace the feeling of wet cold grass being squished beneath your raw bare feet in the shade on a warm summer day. Green is optimistic...seeing things for how they really are, and then realizing that the way things really are, are not all that terrible. In fact, I would say that one has to realize how bad things can become until a bright side can even exist. This doesn't mean go out and look for a dead forest. No, no. If your forest is still going on forever and you want to explore, keep exploring. But...if for some reason, things don't go exactly the way you thought, it is ok. There is something greater to be learned from all of this, in fact, for some reason, you weren't supposed to explore the rest of that forest until you realized that there were other ones, that it may not exist, and that not all people think the same way as you.

Orange and I have had a different experience. Orange food...eh it was ok back in the day. As a child I never had an incredibly desire to consume pumpkins as I do today. I actually was turned onto orange first by my freshman dorm roommate, Yishain Yao. The day we moved into our little dorm room, I really wanted to see what his girl was all about. I decided to ask her the classic question, that of course we all outwardly think is nonjudgemental and neutral but really find a lot of meaning and truth behind...ok maybe that is just me, "What is your favorite color?" She responded with no hesitation, "Orange." I chuckled in my mind. Orange...what a lame color. "Hmm....interesting choice. Would you mind me asking why?" She responded, "I know its not what you hear from everyone. Orange...kind of ok, I mean its bright and undoubtedly pretty, but no one ever really chooses it as one's favorite color. And it is for that reason that it is mine. Why should I deny the greatness of orange just because it isn't as pretty as pink, passionate as red, or cool as blue?" Automatically my opinion shifted and decided that this Yishian knew what was up. It wasn't at this moment that I decided that orange was just as good as green. Oh no...it had to grow on me. Once I gave orange a chance, I realized how incredibly awesome this color was. Seeing orange everywhere...the sunset, my favorite foods, fall leaves, a vast amount of commercial fonts, and an accent to many other colors, I started seeing other biases of mine drift away. Once I found out that my good friend Meredith's favorite color was orange as well, I decided that I was friends with the right kind of people...non-biased, tasteful and courageous. That was it...I couldn't deny this love for orange any longer.

Well I guess I had to relate that to something a little deeper. Green and orange. Simple pair, inevitably extraordinary. Whether it is a carrot and it's stem, and sour gummy worm, or pumpkin pesto...I love the both of them!