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#VeganMoFo Day 31: SpooOoOOooOOoOoky Baked Jack-o’-Lantern

I don’t really DO Halloween, but I had a notion on how to zhush up something I like to make so it’s Halloween-y: I baked a whole red kabocha squash (which has a tasty tender skin you can eat, but looks suitably pumpkin-esque) with the guts scooped out a small hole in the top, then filled it with black forbidden rice and carved out a jack-o’-lantern face.

The rice was cooked with â…“ coconut milk along with water, cinnamon sticks, a bay leaf, and a pinch of salt, so it smelled sweet and spicy and tasted almost as good. Stuffed in a baked squash, I could slice it up for a beautiful plate of black rice and orange squash. This isn’t a meal on its own, though, not really: to go with the squash and rice, I went with a Thai inspiration and made tofu paht prik king, a nice simple stir-fry with red curry paste and green beans. Yum.

(If I’d had a slightly bigger squash and bought or made green curry paste instead, I’d have put the curry in the bottom of the squash so it’d leak out of the jack-o’-lantern mouth like vomit. I KNOW, ADORABLE. BUT ONLY ON HALLOWEEN.)

And that’s it for VeganMoFo. *sniff* If you like what I’ve been doing here, follow me on Instagram or subscribe to my weekly weirdo newsletter. I don’t know how often I’ll keep blogging like this, but I’ll definitely keep cooking. Hope you do, too.