fauren

Acorn Squash with Wheatberry and Cremini Mushroom Stuffing

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal (buy)

Ha! Remember me? This fall was an eventful one. A new niece, a new job, travel, what have you. Not that I'm making excuses, but... I'm totally making excuses.

So here we are. 2008 is drawing to a close, and I'm sitting in my breakfast room here in Brooklyn, watching the snow blowing around outside and listening to sad bastard songs about winter with a cup of lukewarm coffee in hand. I'm on an unprecedented two week vacation, which is thankfully giving me some time to experiment in the kitchen again, and so I've come out of hiding to share a hearty winter recipe I whipped up last night.

Acorn squash is one of my favorite winter vegetables, and this recipe was inspired by one I made from the Joy of Cooking for a winter dinner party last year, for quinoa-stuffed acorn squash. I've already documented my love for cooking with grains, but I thought the quinoa was too delicate to keep up with a veggie like acorn squash, so for this recipe I used wheatberries instead. I wanted to add a bit more heft to the stuffing, too, and the gigantic bin of cremini mushrooms at Fairway served as a delicious inspiration.

Edible, Audible

It's impossible to count the number of afternoons I spent in my room when I was younger, lying on the floor in front of my stereo with tapes and CDs strewn around me, composing what I swore every time was going to be the perfect mixtape. The first few were rough -- songs taped off the radio caught DJs mid-sentence, the transitions between tracks popped where I'd pressed stop and then record again, the last song on a side got cut off where I'd overestimated how much time was left. I like to think I got better at it over the years.

(On the beach in Westport, MA)

I distinctly remember thinking in early high school that it would be SO COOL if someone invented a thing that let you make your own CDs instead of tapes. Really, what a novel idea. I still have the first CD mix I ever made, composed in the attic computer room of my friend Al's house when we were probably 16. I believe it's called something incredibly lame like "Yummy Tunes" and has a picture of cherries on the cover and a chocolate covered strawberry on the inside. While my musical tastes might have been a little misguided at that age, that CD actually resonates quite a bit for me even now -- it was probably the first time I consciously linked food and music.

The trouble with writing a blog on a single subject is that it doesn't always allow a person to speak to her other interests. This is hard for me, since right up there next to food in the list of Things That Mean A Whole Lot To Lauren is music. The two actually fit nicely together in my non-digital life -- I hardly ever cook without a soundtrack -- but figuring out how to join the two here has been a little tricky.

So today begins an experiment. You could call it my new mixtape project, I guess, and it's based on the intersection of my two most pronounced forms of consumption. Not all these songs have to do with food per se, but I'll try my best to explain what is going on in my head when I share what I do. (Just be forewarned that, a lot of times, there is no explanation for what goes on in my head.)

If it can be considered as such, the honor of the first song posted here at Fauren goes to Elvis Perkins, who I had the incredible pleasure of seeing (in the form of Elvis Perkins in Dearland) live in Prospect Park this past Friday evening. I couldn't possibly do their set justice in words, but suffice it to say that it moved me to make music a part of this blog.

Happy listening. Happy cooking.

Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping (buy)