Tracey Lamont: August 2016

In my early days, growing up in Texas, I always enjoyed food. My father and mother both cooked nutritious, balanced meals on a daily basis. I remember being young and my dad had ordered a bag of large shrimp. I remember asking what was in the bag. He schooled me. I don't recall having shrimp before that although I had tried frog legs one evening at the Lubbock Club. Go figure. I still can remember how good the food tasted which is why I appreciate certain foods. Looking back, I really enjoyed it when our friends would invite me to go get Mexican food. I always enjoyed it and it's a favorite to this day. I had a fairly well rounded palate for a younger person. I was 19 when I tried Italian bouillabaisse. It was so good. Isn't it interesting how you can remember everything about the experience? The food, the ambiance, the people you were with. Maybe it's just me. Anyone who really knows me will tell you, she lives to eat! There are those who eat to live and then there are people like me who live to eat. I prefer savory foods to sweet. I like things like Arugula, Swiss cheese, blue cheese, collard greens and an occasional gin and tonic or a Greyhound is quite nice. My mother would serve Brussel sprouts and to this day I enjoy them. I section the leaves and have them in salads as well as sautéed in butter. I would pass up dessert for a prime rib dinner, end cut please.

Today I was thinking about appetizers. Why? I don't know. I just do these things. I saw yellow squash, onion and sweet potato while at the store. The fruits and vegetables looked really good. I was thinking how I could combine them to come up with a tasty appetizer. So, this is what I did. First, I placed a sweet potato in the oven at 350 and I poked holes into it using a fork. I knew it would take a while to cook. Then, while it was baking, Meridian diced an onion into very small bits and then sautéed them in a small amount of butter and set them to the side. I cut the yellow squash in 1/2 circle rounds. I lightly greased a pan and placed the rounds flat in the pan. I baked them at 400 for about 30 minutes. Then we flipped them so the other side could get brown. As the squash was cooking, I peeled the skin off the sweet potato. I mashed it on a plate and added a slight drizzle of Karo syrup to it. When the squash was done, we layered the sweet potato on the squash rounds by spoon and topped them off with the diced, sautéed onions. Cilantro to garnish.