My garden did two things really well this year: zucchini and a miracle pumpkin that came from the seeds of a store bought pumpkin I made soup out of last year. But what do you do when you have more squash than you know what to do with?
You make zucchini bread muffins and real pumpkin pie straight from a roasted pumpkin, that’s what!
Zucchini Bread Ingredients:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon salt
1 large egg, lightly beaten
½ cup canola or vegetable oil
¼ cup milk
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded zucchini
¼ cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
¼ cup chopped walnuts
First, preheat your oven to 350°F so it’ll be ready to bake your muffins. Then combine the flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl. In a separate, larger bowl, beat the egg, oil, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla together. Then stir in the dry ingredients until the entire mixture is moistened. After that, it’s time to fold in the zucchini, chocolate chips, and walnuts. At this point, you’ll want to either grease a muffin tin or throw some muffin cups into your muffin tin. Then fill each muffin mold two-thirds of the way full. DON’T completely fill them or your muffins will be difficult to get out of the tin, and will be monstrously big. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
These muffins freeze pretty well too, if you want to make a large batch and then save some for the winter. This recipe will give you about a dozen muffins, so plan accordingly. I made tons this summer to keep up with the way my zucchini plant was producing.
Pumpkin Pie Crust Ingredients:
1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup butter
3 ½ tablespoons cold water
Pumpkin Pie Filling Ingredients:
2 cups mashed, cooked pumpkin
1 (12 fluid ounce) can evaporated milk
2 eggs, beaten
¾ cup packed brown sugar
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
First off, if you don’t want to make pie crust or roast your own pumpkin, store bought is fine. If you are roasting your own pumpkin, make sure to cut it in half, take out the seeds, scrape the sides with a spoon, and roast it at 400 degrees for 20-40 minutes. Placing the cut sides down on a cookie sheet is an effective way to do this. Once you can spear the pumpkin flesh easily with a fork, it’s done. Remove from the oven, and mash. If you end up with more than 2 cups of pumpkin, double your recipe and make two pies!
To make the crust, mix together the flour and salt. Cut your butter into the flour, and then add cold water one tablespoon at a time. You may need only 3 tablespoons, or up to 4 tablespoons, so pay attention to the consistency of your dough when mixing. Mix the dough after each tablespoon of water and repeat until dough is moist enough to hold together. With lightly floured hands, shape the dough into a ball. On a lightly floured cutting board, roll the dough out to about ⅛ inch thickness. With a sharp knife, cut the dough 1 ½ inch larger than the upside-down 8- to 9-inch pie pan. Gently roll the dough around the rolling pin and transfer it right-side up onto the pie pan. From there, unroll it and ease the dough into the bottom of the pie pan.
Once your pumpkin is done roasting, take it out of the oven and let it cool. Then peel off the skin and mash it! If you want a smoother consistency, you can also puree your pumpkin. I just really like getting my hands dirty mashing the pumpkin, and feel the mashed pumpkin consistency of the pie holds together better, but both methods will taste delicious! After you’ve prepared your pumpkin and put it in a large bowl, add your evaporated milk, eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt to the bowl and mix. You can do this with a spoon or with an electric mixer or immersion blender. Regardless of your method, be sure to mix the pie filling well. Then pour the filling into your prepared crust and bake for forty minutes or until when a knife is inserted one inch from the edge comes out clean.
Now that we’ve squashed all that squash away into those baked goods, we’re going to talk about a game that was squashed into the shadow of its predecessors—Mass Effect: Andromeda!
Let’s take a moment also to appreciate how well BioWare did on making the cover for Andromeda a whole lot less gendered than their previous covers. It still bothers me that I have to look at male Shepard’s ugly mug every time I pull up a track from one of the Mass Effect trilogy soundtracks. Star reflecting helmet and practical genderless spacesuit/armor, however, I’m all about.
When Andromeda was first released I lovingly referred to it as Andurrmadurr because it was so buggy that it was nearly unplayable. I put it down for a few months and came back after a hefty amount of patching had been done, and loved every minute of it.
What’s unfortunate about Andromeda is that since it follows the monumental Mass Effect trilogy, it had a lot to live up to—and has been catching a lot of hate from disappointed fans of the previous trilogy and fans who wanted a less buggy game in the beginning. My hope today is to convince you that Andromeda deserves a second chance—because it’s chock full of really important, interesting things for the intersectional and feminist gamer.
If you’ve never heard of Mass Effect before, google it or get the run-down on it from my previous blog post that went up earlier this year.
Now that you understand that Mass Effect is a sci-fi title set in space where multiple alien species coexist and collaborate, imagine they decided to take a little jaunt over to the next galaxy. A one-way trip that takes 600 years in a cryo-stasis pod with the hope of establishing a new home. When Ryder wakes up in Andromeda, it’s to the reality that the previous intel on livable planets in the Andromeda galaxy has become a little outdated. One mission later, she’s replacing her father as the human Pathfinder and tasked with finding a way to make a home for herself, humanity, and all the other people who came to Andromeda with the dream of a new life.
We’ll be using female pronouns for the player character in this blog post, as Sara Ryder is the twin I’ve picked both times I’ve played through Andromeda, and she’s the one I know best. Her twin Scott Ryder will also be mentioned, as whichever twin the player doesn’t pick also plays a role in the story. The reason? Andromeda is a family story. While Shepard’s story in the Mass Effect trilogy was more of an epic, Ryder’s story is one of discovery and new life.
The theme of family doesn’t stop with Ryder, however. Many of Ryder’s team mates are also very attached to their families. Drack, the old krogan warrior, is a grandfather. His granddaughter Kesh serves on the Nexus as Superintendent. Vetra, your turian artillery and trade specialist, is a big sister. Peebee is an asari misfit who finds a place on the team. Drack’s granddaughter Kesh, Vetra’s sister Sid, and Peebee’s ex-lover that left her with attachment issues all feature heavily in these team members’ loyalty missions—which really brings out the theme of family and how familial connections define us. In tone, this gives Andromeda a focus on nurture and creation that Mass Effect has never had before.
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| Drack |
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| Vetra |
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| Peebee |
These themes and ideas are furthered by the profile of the new alien species the player encounters in Andromeda—the angara. The angara are a hugely emotional species—but in a very different way than has been previously portrayed. Often, emotion is seen as the opposite of logic and is therefore discounted as worthless. It’s also been coded as “female” in our own culture for a very long time, which has a whole other set of associations that I won’t bother to get into, but you get the idea. It’s a big deal to see emotion highlighted as an intelligent and valuable thing. Plus, the angaran team member to join Ryder—named Jaal, for those of you wondering—is male. This means that we have a male character exhibiting high levels of emotion in healthy ways within the game, which is another great stride for the Mass Effect franchise.
On top of that, we finally have female krogan, salarians, and turians popping up as normal NPCs everywhere in the game—giving the galaxy a more realistic population than the earlier games. Female angara are common as well. As are women in power, from the sleazy human crime lord Sloane Kelly to the powerful and rigid krogan leader Nakmor Morda to the asari and salarian pathfinders. Conversations about diverse family groups, correct pronouns, and same-sex relationships aren’t uncommon either. Andromeda is also the first videogame EVER to feature a sex scene with cunnilingus in it! If that’s not a feminist victory in itself, I don’t know what is—and that scene is part of Jaal’s romance, since I know some of you are wondering. ;)
Although Mass Effect: Andromeda had a rough start—read all about the drama that went down at BioWare here—the game has been patched, and the story and characters were handled with so much love and compassion that you won’t regret squashing Andromeda into your media queue. Especially if you have a side of zucchini bread muffins or pumpkin pie to refuel on between skirmishes.
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