If you would like to wow your guests with an unusual side dish at your next holiday dinner…
This one is for you!
There is nothing I love more than taking classic dishes and shaking them up a little.
Before we get to this beautiful dish…two quick things:
1) Daily Pictures are up. [My excitement got the best of me and I posted them at 12:01 am. Is that nerdy or what?]
2) I am organizing and updating my recipes page.
Hallelujah! Can you hear the angels singing? I sure can.
I fell off the recipe-updating wagon for about 2-3 months, but I hope to get caught up by my 53rd birthday with any luck.
Ok, ok my 50th birthday. So demanding.
Tonight, I updated, organized, and alphabetized my Breads, Cakes/cupcakes/pies, Cookies, Muffins, Raw foods/No Bake, and Other categories!
It is incredible how long the list is getting.
It is also incredible that I remember how to alphabetize.
Or spell alphabetize for that matter.
I still have to update my Dinner, Lunch, Breakfast, and Appetizer categories though. That will be a massive undertaking. I will need a Green Monster to my right and a glass of wine to my left for that one.
I have also added my Project Food Blog posts at the top of my recipes page. If you are looking for any of the recipes I have made for PFB, that is where they are hiding!
Whew. There is hope for me yet.
Tonight, I whipped up a delicious holiday-inspired side dish that will have heads turning, tongues wagging, and drool dripping.
Or people might look at your dish and run like hell. I really can’t guarantee anything here.
Garlic Pumpkin Mashed Potatoes with Spinach
Pumpkin mashed potatoes…with SPINACH! Such a crazy, yet lovely flavour combination. I fell in love with these potatoes as did Eric. The flavours of the pumpkin, garlic, sea salt, and spinach really go lovely with the potatoes.
Adapted from Cake, Batter, Bowl.
Ingredients:
- 7 red potatoes, scrubbed & chopped (or Yukon Gold variety)
- 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1-1.5 cups pumpkin puree, to taste
- Two handfuls spinach, stems removed & chopped
- 1/2 cup Almond milk
- 2 tbsp Earth Balance or butter
- 1.5 teaspoons kosher salt, or more to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Paprika, for garnish
Directions: Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat and boil potatoes for 18 to 22 minutes or until fork tender. Drain and place in a very large bowl. Meanwhile, heat olive oil over low heat in a skillet and sauté garlic for about 1 minute. be careful not to burn it like I did! Drain and mash potato chunks in the large bowl with a fork. Mix in pumpkin puree, spinach, almond milk, Earth Balance/butter, black pepper, and salt. Makes 5-7 servings.
*Best served immediately- the potatoes tend to get a bit watery (from the pumpkin) if they are put in the fridge.
Recipe note: This is the last pumpkin recipe I am making for a while!!!
Gather the troops!
Cook, drain, and admire the beauty of zee taters.
Also, admire the beauty of your tired hand-me-down pots and pot holders.
New things are over rated.
Now magic happens….
A beautiful unison of two things I never thought I would see together: Pumpkin and Potatoes.
Isn’t that just lovely?
Add in your salt, pepper, spinach, almond milk, and [hopefully not burned] garlic and give that arm a workout.
Sprinkle with Paprika if you dare.
It adds a little flare.
Uh oh, the poet in me is coming out.
I best get myself to bed.
Speaking of sleep, I have been having the craziest dreams lately….and many nightmares about random things! Many of them involve people chasing me or trying to hurt me. I even had a few dreams about Project Food Blog this past week. One of them was that I went to submit my video this coming Sunday and Foodbuzz told me that I handed it in a week late and was disqualified. I tried to show them that my video was uploaded on November 7th, but they didn’t care. Then my head was chopped off.
Ok, that last part didn’t happen, but it could have!
I can go for weeks without remembering any significant dreams and then all of a sudden I have a slew of strange dreams and nightmares all at once and random people popping up from my past. Sometimes I ‘see’ people in my dreams and I think to myself, ‘Where the hell did you come from!?’
Do you remember your dreams much or give much thought to them? Do you think that they mean anything or are they just a product of random thoughts swirling through your mind?
I’m constantly dreaming about school (I’m a teacher). Most of them involve being in front of the class completely unprepared and I wake up in a cold sweat!!
Pumpkin mashed potatoes looks yummo!
Me too! For the first few weeks of teaching, I consistently dreamed about being late to work and showing up unprepared (i.e. without tests, quizzes, lesson plans, etc.). The principal was so disappointed in me. Sad, but it makes me feel less insane to know that other people have these dreams of anxiety!
I use to love to try and interpret my dreams, so I’d try to remember to write them down, but it never happened. What I did realize was that I would have nightmares when I was stressed. Dreams are like a stress call for me – I know I need to take it easy when they occur.
Psychology is so fascinating to me :)
I love seeing savory ways to prepare canned pumpkin. The color of this dish makes me think it tastes like mashed sweet potatoes…but bettttter??
I remember my nightmares way easier than my dreams but I definitely get Deja vu all the time! I hear that means my life is on track though which is kind of cool…
Those potatoes are so pretty! Most of my dreams surprisingly enough involve FOOD!
Earlier this year, soon after we broke up, I dream about my ex-boyfriend-ish–eh, I’ll just call him “boy I loved”–kissing his new woman. Turns out he did have a new woman: his “bitchy” (his words not mine) roommate. My dreams are often painfully real.
I think the last set of crazy dreams I had were during the whole year before our wedding. Every problem you could ever think of leading up to a wedding I dreamed about. I typically don’t remember my dreams and can’t remember the last time I had a scary one. I’m sure I will tonight though..haha. This dish looks so different and is super pretty!!!
What a gorgeous color! I love adding spinach to potato dishes, and in fact have done so almost every day this week! I can imagine how lovely pumpkin would be in this dish, and garlic, yum! A for your question… I remember my dreams for about 10 minutes after I wake up, and then promptly forget them unless they are very odd or unusual. I always wish I remembered them though, then I could decide whether they are just random thoughts or actually mean something.
Are all the recipes you publish in your posts on the recipes page? It would be extremely helpful if that was the case, as I often find myself drooling over some recipe you have published a while back, but can’t for the life of me remember when you posted it :) Harebrained, yes I am…
And about dreams. I like to think they are just the mind doing a bit of cleaning. I am not sure that the events in them as such have to mean anything, but I certainly think that they are born out of something that has been on your mind, perhaps troubling you.
Wow, how did you ever think of putting pumpkin puree in mashed potatoes? I eat a very similar recipe very often (usually with kale instead of spinach) but I never thought of adding pumpkin!
I have lots of weird dreams and I usually don’t try and interpret them. I did wonder about a recent dream theme, though – I kept having dreams about watching space shuttles fall out of the sky. It was awful.
But the last couple nights my dreams have been much better – I keep dreaming about Luke Pasqualino! Look him up and you’ll see why (he’s on actor on Skins, a British TV show).
I always mix pumpkin or carrots with my mashed potato but never with spinach! Yum!
P.s I’m getting the sense you LOVE pumpkin!
I almost never have dreams, at least I never remember them! I did have one significant one recently, though… it was strange. And all my dreams seem to happen in some busy, futuristic, industrial-looking mall. It’s weird.
I have the exact same thing: long periods of not remembering a thing followed by a period of really vivid but totally crazy dreams. For me it is related to being very busy in my head all day. When that starts to wear off, the crazy dreams begin. So I think it is just a way of the brain to process all input now that it finally starts to get some rest. I always recognize a lot of things from real life that show up and not even the main events of my life but the small almost insignifcant things.
Oh, and the dish looks yummie! Got to make it.
mmmmm. These look great! I think the combo is a winner for sure ;)
Don’t get me wrong, girl…. I DO love all the pumpkin stuff. But do you make anything without pumpkin or butternut squash anymore? ;-)
I am in the process of learning how to be a lucid dreamer, so it’s funny that you would post about dreams tonight! So far, it hasn’t been working…but this is only my 3rd night of trying so hopefully I will make some progress.
hahah the reason I have had so many pumpkin recipes lately is because I have been searching for pumpkin ideas for Challenge #8 in PFB…which is to feature pumpkin as an ingredient!
Oh I love pumpkin mash especially with sweet potatoes. This looks great!!!
I have the craziest dreams most of the time and yes there are people that pop into them and it does make you go hmmmmm!As far as those mashed potatos….they will be in my belly very soon :) Yummmy
Oh my god, I literally just woke up all distraught and crying because I had a dream that my mom had something wrong with her ovaries and died! :( I usually can’t remember my dreams so this was scary. What did I do to make myself feel better? Well, after texting her and making some coffee I came to Oh She Glows, only to find out that I’m not the only one having crazy nightmares! :D
PS. I am LOVING all the pumpkin and autumn flair. I’m so jealous that I can’t just run to a kitchen to test all the recipes (thank you university dorms). So, I have just been stockpiling recipes to make when I go home for Thanksgiving.
Hello beautiful potatoes!
I love you already and I haven’t even tasted you!
You think up the BEST flavor combos! Yum!