kale and squash and ravioli and caramelized onions and green onions and...

<

so, last night i couldn't decide what to make, so i was looking through the recipes i have bookmarked on my computer, and found this recipe, from one of the most exciting (to me) cooking blogs, 101 cookbooks. so i set out to make it, but my usual inability to follow recipes took over and i ended up with something different.
in my fridge, i had some artichoke ravioli that was going to expire pretty soon, so that became the center of the dish. conveniently, i live right across the street from the (ridiculously expensive, faux cooperative) grocery store, so i could get everything else with very little trouble. i got my favorite green, dinosaur kale.
(isn't it pretty? look at the picture randomly found on the internet!)

i also picked up a smallish butternut squash. it is less exciting than dino kale, so no picture of that. at home, i already had green onions, parmesan, and caramelized onions.

---

the mention of caramelized onions brings me to a point: recently, i have been really good at, if i know i will be around for a while, caramelizing onions in a crockpot on high for about 5 hours. you can also set them on low for like 10-12 hours, and when you come home from work you will have a bunch of them! basically, i throw some earth balance (but, you can always use butter) in the crock pot, turn it on, and then set to chopping onions. i have a small crock pot, so i can get like two large and one small to medium onion in there at once. i mostly use yellow onions. i throw them in, toss them around so they are all coated with butter, and then let them cook. if i think of it, i stir them once in a while, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. i think i mostly do that for myself. once they are really broken down and a consistent mellow brown color, i put them in a ziploc and keep them in the freezer. it saves a huge amount of time later.

---

after i got home from the store, i realized i had forgotten a lemon. i decided it was not worth dealing with, and that i would cross that bridge when i came to it.
the first thing i did was chop the butternut squash. ever since i got the best peeler in the WORLD, i am willing to peel things because it is shockingly easy. so i peeled the squash, then cut off the neck. i chopped off the end of the neck, and then sliced it into like 1/2" thick-ish slices. then i cubed it. to cut the main part, i basically cut the end off the roundish part, cut what remained in half, scooped out the seeds, and then sliced that up and cubed it, now that it is manageable. cutting my smallish butternut squash, including peeling, took less than 5 minutes this way, which is clearly amazing. i put all the squash into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, on some heat that was probably way too high for it because i am into speed, and then put the water on to boil for the ravioli. every once in a while, i stirred the squash.
next i chopped up an entire kale, just roughly. i had some time, so i snipped the green onions into little pieces with my kitchen scissors (which i feel like is way faster than cutting them. also, let's be honest, by "kitchen scissors" i mean "scissors that i found in the kitchen and washed off," so don't be intimidated.
once the water boiled, i put in a package of ravioli, and a minute or two later the squash was almost brown enough, so i threw in the kale and a small handful of the frozen caramelized onions.
i drained the ravioli when it floated to the top, and threw that in the pan with everything else. i also put in a splash of lemon juice, ground on a little salt and pepper, and shredded some parmesan on it, but that is totally optional. also, i decided it needed crunch, so i put on some sesame seeds (it might have been nice to toast them, but they were an afterthought).
i stirred it and let it heat through. then i ate it, and it was amazing.