Back in the Kitchen: Buttercup Squash and Sage Orzo

Quinn has been anticipating the arrival of buttercup squash in our Sunseed Farm share for weeks. She says it's because buttercup squash is so hard to come by. It's always spaghetti squash, she says, or, even worse, the tantalizingly similar butternut squash. But never buttercup squash.

Or so Quinn says.

(I suspect the excitement centered around the eponym of the vegetable, Buttercup, an oversized, yellow, stuffed hippo, beloved by our college friends. Pictured above.)

The most amazing thing about cooking at my house is that I chop up a few apples, wash some broccoli, convert fresh sage measurements to apply to the dry sage we have available in our kitchen (roughly two to one), and all of a sudden there will be a delicious dish that keeps me fed through mid-week.

That's what happened here. Quinn and I were in the kitchen cutting vegetables on a rainy Saturday evening, Garrison Keillor was crooning sweetly on the radio, and then, magically, there was a mustard-colored (misleading cue, as it did not taste like mustard) stew-like meal.

Best eaten as leftovers on Monday after a morning in court. Sit on the kitchen floor, pour yourself a nice glass of grape juice, and chat with Quinn, who is wearing a red-and-black flannel hat with earflaps.

What I learned: sage conversions. And that you can eat the stem and leaves of broccoli.

Here are the ingredients Quinn used:

broccoli
apples
buttercup squash
white wine
chicken broth (soup base)
butter
onions
garlic
sage
salt
pepper
orzo