Hmmm...Comfort...

The other day I was scrolling through the blog, and I asked myself the same thing a lot of you used ask, "How did you have time to do all that cooking?" I feel like I need to do a series now on how to survive when you have no time to plan meals, grocery shop, or cook.

But as the semester and my travel schedule winds down (or maybe as I start to look for every excuse I can find *not* to tackle all this end-of-the-semester grading), I find myself playing in the kitchen again.

The past week, I've made a couple recipes that I thought I should share with my vegetarian friends. A couple of these friends have told me that one of the hardest thing about the lifestyle change was giving up all those meat-based comfort foods that seem to pop up in all the cooking magazines this time of year. These are two recipes where you will not miss the meat (even if you are a carnivore...as my carnivore husband will attest). Sadly, I am a klutz and knocked our camera off the counter this week, making it inoperable, so I have no photos to share.

I heard Nigella Lawson describe this cheddar cheese risotto on NPR, and I knew we had to try it. Risotto has become one of our go-to meals since I mastered Lorna Sass's basic risotto recipe for the pressure cooker. I adapted Lawson's recipe to Sass's method, and I was able to make this meal (which feed us for days) in no time. I also added a little steamed broccoli to my serving just to get a little green in it.

Okay, this second recipe is not technically veggie since it includes bacon, but I argue that the bacon could easily be omitted. Plus this recipe, pan fried butternut squash ravioli with walnut butter sauce and bacon, is out-of-this-world good. I mean it includes the words ravioli, butter, and bacon - how could it not be amazing??? It comes from Iowa Girl Eats, and you can find the tutorial on making the ravioli here and the recipe here. It's a bit fussy, but you can also make it in stages (in fact you almost have to make it in stages) - first roasting the squash, then making the ravioli and freezing them, and then prepping the actual meal. You could make the ravioli on the weekend, freeze them, and then prep the meal on a weeknight. It also makes a lot of food. I used one butternut squash and had more filling than wanton wrappers, plus we still have about half of the prepped ravioli in the freezer. Also, I used pecans instead of walnuts because of our household allergy.

But let me say again that this is incredible! Ben and I just sat there and made yum noises and talked about how good it was. Yes, it might not be what one considers "light," but in the words of Julie in the film Julie & Julia, "Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter." It would be perfect for a veggie Thanksgiving, and I'm thinking of making it one of my signature dishes.