A watched squash never roasts

I had this dumb squash in the oven for fifty minutes, and it still wasn’t as roasty as I wanted it. The broccoli cooked in less than a half hour, but these took their time. Also excuse the very dark pictures. Daylight savings is the worst so I didn’t have any natural light to work with today. They’re not ideal, but I wanted to show off my meal prep for the week. I was able to get four servings out of this and it came out to around $1.90 per serving.

I’m finishing up my internship right now at a middle school and am almost done with getting all the hours needed to graduate. Even though I loved my school site last spring, it was difficult getting direct hours seeing kids since the school had almost a thousand seventh and eight graders, so my role there consisted mostly of helping with schedule changes and crisis counseling. The middle school I’m doing my internship at has less than two hundred kids and I’ve gotten to know almost every one of them. This fall I developed and ran six different counseling groups and have taught several classroom lessons, but also do smaller tasks like hall or lunch duty or just meeting with kids when they need to get stuff off their chest. I’ve become the unofficial orange peeler for a sixth grade girls’ lunch table and they told me today how much they’re going to miss me when I graduate. I’m not sure if they meant they’ll miss me as a person or me as the only adult who will stand around and peel five oranges for them while they roast me. One of them asked why I looked so different today, and I said I’d parted my hair differently but she assured me it’s because I wasn’t wearing makeup and looked sick. The honesty of twelve year olds is amazing.

It’s scary to think how I only have a month left of school before I’ll be a real school counselor. There’s a school hiring immediately that’s five minutes from the apartment I’m moving into next March, so I’m sending them my resume tomorrow. I was planning on applying to schools next spring once I move closer, but I guess a few weeks from now I could potentially have a job that pays more than minimum wage??? Then I’ll finally have enough money to buy entire cart-fuls of this soy chorizo. The downside is if I get a job starting in January, I’ll temporarily move into my boyfriend’s parents’ house until we can move into the apartment. His parents are the nicest people alive, but I’m not sure his mom would let me cook as much chorizo as I need. And I need a lot. So what’s more important, spending time with the people I love or being homeless but having lots of vegetarian-friendly, spicy, textured vegetable protein that I like to pretend is real meat? It’s a trick question, because the answer is of course the chorizo. Don’t tell him I said that. His mom makes really good salmon and I can’t lose her. We also won’t have a Trader Joe’s near us, so I’m really sacrificing a lot for this guy. Tune in next week when I evaluate what my priorities in life truly are.

Squash, Soy Chorizo, and Broccoli Rice Bowl

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 12 oz. Trader Joe’s Soy Chorizo, casing removed
• 12 oz. Trader Joe’s Butternut Squash Zig-Zags
• 12 oz. broccoli florets
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon rosemary
• 3 cups rice, cooked (which is around 1 1/2 cups of dry rice)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees. Toss broccoli and squash in a bowl with one tablespoon of oil, and add salt, pepper, and rosemary. Honestly I’m not sure how much rosemary I used, so just eyeball it (????). Sorry I’m not more help. Place on foil-lined baking sheet and bake for 25 minutes, turning after 15. My oven doesn’t cook like a normal oven, so it might take shorter or longer. Just watch them. Is this the worst recipe you’ve ever read?
2. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chorizo and cook until warmed through, around 7-8 minutes. Since it’s not meat you don’t need to worry about it being “undercooked.” Just make sure it’s warmed and crispy.
3. Divided the cooked rice (I used a brown rice/quinoa mixture) into four bowls. Add the chorizo and vegetables.