Squash And Potatoes

Seattle winter — gray light, rain at 3 PM dark. Amazon this week. Sprint planning Tuesday. Two hours of meetings I could have been a Slack message.

Hana, 1, a small loud animal. She mostly eats rice and bananas. Jisoo FaceTimed Tuesday. We made doenjang jjigae together — me in Wallingford, her in Haeundae. Eleven thousand miles. The same soup.

Kimchi jjigae Sunday. Aged kimchi, pork belly, tofu, scallions. The week's spine.

Drove to Bellevue Saturday. Karen was tired. I brought soft food. She ate.

The kimchi crock was bubbling. The fermentation was the fermentation.

I texted Jisoo a photo of the kimchi in the new onggi pot. She replied with the thumb-up emoji and a Korean-language critique. The duality is the gift.

Sprint review at Amazon Friday. Two hours. I could have been on a podcast.

The Capitol Hill apartment kitchen is small. We make it work.

I made coffee at seven. Hana ate cereal at seven-fifteen. Min wandered down at seven-twenty-five. James left for work at eight. The morning was the morning. The standard.

I sat at the kitchen counter at six AM with a notebook and a cup of green tea. Writing time before the house wakes. The pre-light hour is the only writing hour I trust.

Rain on the porch all afternoon Saturday. The Wallingford rain is its own weather. I sat with a book and a tea and did not move for two hours.

The shiso on the south fence is fragrant and unruly. I brushed past it taking the compost out and the smell stopped me. The smell is the country. The smell is Jisoo's apartment.

A blog reader wrote about her own adoptee experience. We exchanged three emails this week.

Reading at night. A novel by a Korean-American writer about a family in 1990s LA. I underlined four sentences. The underlining is the marking-of-the-territory of the soul.

The kimchi crock was bubbling Saturday morning when I checked. The bubbling is the right bubbling. The fermentation knew what it was doing.

I read a thread on the Korean Adoptee subreddit Saturday. Some posts brought up old anger. Most are people figuring it out in real time. We are not unique. We are a community.

My Korean is improving. Slowly. Painfully. Conversationally adequate now. I can argue about kimchi proportions in two languages, which is a milestone in any marriage between mother and daughter.

Yoga Tuesday morning at the studio. The forward fold released something I had been carrying in the shoulder. The mat is the mat.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening sentence took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

Sunday farmers market on Wallingford Avenue. The kabocha at the Asian vendor's stall. The shishito peppers. The brokered conversation. We bought too much. We always do.

James and I had date night Friday. Indian restaurant on 45th. We ate too much. We sat in the car after talking about nothing for an hour. The marriage is the marriage.

Hana left a Lego on the kitchen floor. I stepped on it at two AM. Standard.

Jisoo sent a photo of the dol the kids did for our visit last summer. The photo went on the fridge.

David came over for Sunday dinner. He brought some tomatoes from the Bellevue garden.

Therapy Tuesday with Dr. Kim. We talked about the parents — the two sets, the one living, the one gone, the one who became real after thirty years and the one who was real my whole life and is now gone. The work is the layered work.

We always buy too much at the Sunday market — the kabocha went into a bag alongside the shishito peppers and David’s tomatoes from Bellevue, and by Monday I needed to do something honest with all of it. Squash and potatoes is not a glamorous dish, but after a week that asked a lot of me — the meetings, the therapy, the late-night reading, the 2 AM Lego — I wanted something that just cooked itself while I sat at the counter with my tea. This is that recipe: unhurried, warm, and exactly enough.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs kabocha or butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley or scallions, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 425°F. Line a large rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
Prep the vegetables. Peel and cube the squash and potatoes into roughly equal 1-inch pieces so they cook evenly. Pat dry with a paper towel — this helps them roast rather than steam.
Season. In a large bowl, toss the squash and potatoes with olive oil, garlic, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes if using. Spread in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet.
Roast. Roast for 25–30 minutes, flipping once halfway through, until the edges are golden and the centers are tender when pierced with a fork.
Finish and serve. Transfer to a serving dish and scatter with fresh parsley or scallions. Taste and adjust salt. Serve warm alongside rice, eggs, or whatever the week has left you with.

Nutrition (per serving)

Squash And Potatoes — The Farmers Market Haul That Became Sunday Comfort