I’m not sure why I didn’t immediately label the needle rolls once I’d sorted needles into them. Partly, I think it’s because my needle sizer doesn’t do half sizes and I was looking around for one that does. At any rate, I’ve stopped waffling and invested in a 99 cent bottle of fabric paint to accomplish the deed. Now it’ll be much easier to grab the needle I’m looking for and I’ll have no excuse to delay in putting them away.

The butternut squash have been so tempting at the market and I’ve really had stuffed squash on the brain lately. Who knew it would be so hard to find a recipe? In the end I had to invent my own completely from scratch. Jason has finally tired of egg sandwiches for breakfast and made a switch to cereal which meant there were bagels sitting around. Those were converted into a bread crumb topping. The main difficulty here was in hollowing out the squash but other than that it was dreadfully easy to make.

Stuffed Butternut Squash

1 large sweet onion, chopped
1 pound mushrooms, chopped
1 package maple breakfast sausage, chopped
2 cups chicken broth
2 butternut squash
1 whole wheat bagel, processed into crumbs (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt to taste

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Split the squash in half lengthwise, discard seeds. Hollow out the neck of the squash as best you can (please comment if you have tips for this!) and reserve the resultant bits. Saute onion, mushroom, sausage and squash bits in a large pan over medium-high heat adding about 1/2 cup chicken broth at a time. Continue to cook sausage mixture until most of the broth has evaporated. Remove from heat.

Place the squash into a large baking pan and divide sausage filling among the halves. Mix bagel crumbs with olive oil and salt and divide this among the halves using it to top the sausage mixture. Cover the baking pan tightly with foil (you will need to seam two pieces together to get a good seal) and bake for about 90 minutes or until the neck end of the squash is tender.

You didn’t think I would skip the sock update, did you? Here she is all ready for the toe which will be the last frontier of my unusual sock construction experience. It uses a double decrease at either edge of the foot so that should be interesting. I really adore this sock with the exception of those loose stitches along one edge of the heel but the main problem is that this sock is most definitely the wrong size for my pal so I’ll have to go back to the drawing board for her.