Borrowed Kitchens, Part 1: Cheryl's in Las Vegas

Post by Lara

If you've been following our Facebook pages, you'll know Kevin and I officially closed our Peace Corps service last week and returned to the US. And unless you've been living under a rock, you will have heard that all 300+ Peace Corps volunteers and trainees have been temporarily removed from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea as a precaution related to the ongoing Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I may write a post on all that craziness later...but for now just know that we are safe, sad to leave Salone, and happy to be back in the USA. 

Now, on to today's topic:

As this is the first and maybe only chance we will have to take a month off and go do some interesting things while having no one to answer to, we're on a road trip! We start in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada, where Kevin's sister Cheryl just got married. We got a chance to house/dog sit for a few days, and as such we got to cook in a real, fully equipped kitchen! As we anticipate we will get to do this a few more times in the next few weeks, we decided this is a great chance to write a little series on what we like to cook when we can cook ANYTHING.We started off this meal with a trip to Walmart where we had so many choices, we nearly collapsed.  Since the only squash in Sierra Leone is pumpkin, and it's almost autumn, we decided a nice acorn squash would do great.  After that, we kind of just ran with that idea.  Here's what happened:

We chopped up some onion, celery, pepper, and carrot and tossed it with walnuts, bacon bits, raisins, olive oil, chicken stock, cumin and cinnamon.

After baking the squash by itself for 30 minutes, we added the above mixture and baked it some more! It popped and sizzled for 10 minutes or so after we removed it from the oven.

YUM

A side salad and some cheesy garlic bread rounded out our meal. Kevin washed his dinner down with Blue Moon pumpkin ale-- a bit early for fall, but we feel it's fair since we missed autumn two years in a row. 

 

There you have it! dinner came together in about an hour and 15 minutes. Not bad for a couple who used to take an hour just getting from no fire to hot charcoal!  Tomorrow we may mix up all our leftover squash and veggies into a pasta dish, or serve it in a fall-themed salad.  Stay tuned for more Borrowed Kitchen meals!