It’s pretty hard getting by as a University student living away from home. You never have the tools or ingredients that you need to get things done, especially when it comes to cooking and baking.

Yesterday, I finally obtained some Baileys, so that I could make some more sugar cookies to share with everyone on my floor, but realised I didn’t have a electric mixer or even batter. After asking about 5 random people in our building, I still came up empty :(.

Butternut Squash Star Ravioli

Today, I still had the incredible craving to make something, so I googled up a recipe for fresh pasta and grabbed some leftover baked butternut squash in the fridge.

No mixing bowl? Use a plastic tub for washing rice.

No blender? Puree with a spoon/knife.

No pastry wheel? Use a cookie cutter. It’s a much interesting shape than cutting straight lines with a knife. And takes advantage of the cookie cutter I bought recently.

No rolling pin? (wait for it…) Use a mug or a cup. This worked fairly well for the pastry dough that I made a few weeks ago.

Probably due to my inability to mix the ingredients properly, I was left with a tough dough and it was incredibly difficult to flatten out, especially without the right tools. It took me about an hour just to make these 4 pieces of ravioli, I just gave up after that and sliced them up into thick pieces of fettuccine.

Butternut Squash Star Ravioli

I cooked them up and lightly coated them in a butter thyme sauce. The pasta dough itself was really thick and tough, but the centre was still light, sweet and creamy. At least they came out looking great =) .

On my first grocery outing at the beginning of my 28 days, I grabbed a Carnival squash, unfortunately I don’t have any “before” pictures of the squash.

I needed about half the squash for the risotto, which meant I had the other half to use for something else. With plenty of sage left that was starting to go bad, I decided to make some carnival squash chips with sage. After cutting the squash in half and removing the seeds, I thinly sliced the squash with a peeler. I placed the chips on a tray with a baking sheet and brushed them all lightly with some olive oil and sprinkled finely chopped sage and salt on top. I let the squash slices bake until they were dry (probably left them in a little too long). Regardless, the chips were great and I finished them all while I was preparing the squash risotto.

Baked Carnival Squash Chips

I sliced the other half of the squash, removed all the seeds, placed it face down in pan filled with 2 cm of water and baked it at 190°C for about 20 minutes. Once the squash is soft and tender, I cut it up into 1.5 cm cubes and started to make the risotto. I prepared my risotto differently from my usual recipe by sauteing half an onion (diced) and the squash and putting it to the side once the onions have turned clear. I then followed the recipe and added the onions and squash back in when I started to add the broth to the risotto.

Carnival Squash Risotto

This made the risotto flavour much more intense. With the addition of the squash, it made the risotto extremely creamy and buttery and so much more irresistable. I’m definitely making both these dishes again.

Day 2, I tried to make an omelette with some random peas and peppers in the fridge early this morning but ended up rushing it and just eating it out of the pan.  I was running late for work and just threw everything together, so no nice picture for that.

Cabbage and Rice

For dinner, I was hoping to prepare the gnocchi, but it was 6:30pm and my stomach was already grumbling, so I opted for a simple typical asian stir fried dish.  So since my mom is gone, I’m pretty much the only person cooking and eating the fresh ingredients in my house, all my dad does is eat out or buy premade food from T&T.  Because of this, I’m forced to use up all the ingredients in the fridge before they go bad.  So, for dinner today is stir-fried asian cabbage, 3 different kinds in fact! I only know that one type of Napa, not sure about the other two.  I also added shiitake mushrooms and some sort of fungus (I think it’s called golden fungus in Chinese?).

This picture reminds me of something you'd see in a chinese takeout menu

After dinner I roasted Japanese squash (aka Kabocha) in the oven to prepare for gnocchi!  This was my first time making gnocchi, so I was pretty much just winging everything.  I left the squash in the over for far too long unfortunately, and basically ended up making chips out of them.  A small amount was still usable so I roasted some cauliflower to make up the for lack of squash.  After what felt like an eternity of adding flour and kneading, the dough was ready and cut up into little pillows of dough.  Unfortunately, they’re not the prettiest things on the planet, but hopefully they taste better than they look. I’ll probably make it tomorrow for lunch with a butter and sage sauce.

Squash & Broccoli Gnocchi

Squash & Broccoli Gnocchi