A meal of pride.

I suppose you could say that my love of cooking began when I was in early high school. I started to bake, and was pretty good at it. Somehow, I became not good at it...I don't really know what happened. I speculate that is why I was particularly proud of the way my muffins turned out for this meal. They. Were. Delectable.

The recipes for this meal came from my co-op, Local Fare. I made seashell pasta with collards and tomatoes (frankly, a little bland) - and, the source of pride, yellow squash muffins.

Cooking the greens:

And, for the separate component, the muffins - the squash.

After the squash cooked, I mashed it, then added the applesauce. Then, combined with the previously mixed together dry ingredients (I think I overuse fragments, but I justify it by saying it's just about cooking, so why bother if it's an explanation of steps.)

I mentioned before how much I love whole wheat flour, and this is still the case. I doubt I'll use anything else, going forward (though I do wonder how my g-ma's sugar cookies would turn out with whole wheat flour...)

Funny, idiotic story - for some reason, until after the meal, I thought for some reason that I was making biscuits, and thought that a standard tray (idiotically associated with cupcakes in my mind) wouldn't work. I was saying the word muffins and thinking biscuits. A severe blonde moment for this redhead. But anyway, I made the struesel, and sprinkled it on top -

Finished the meal by adding in the tomatoes and pasta. Later, I dressed up the pasta by making a quick white wine sauce with garlic and veggie broth - it was far too bland. The amazing muffins made up for this, however!