butternut squash, carrots and oysters

I love butternut squash. Unfortunately, I am the only one here that does. So when I cooked up a big pot of this Butternut Squash Couscous, I ate it all. It was really, really good, and I only changed up the recipe a tiny bit by using dried cranberries because I really hate raisins, and vegetable broth instead of chicken. I also put a cup or so of shredded carrots into my bowl when I was reheating it - which was good, but that was only because I got a food processor for Christmas and went a bit crazy with a bag of carrots. I'd already made carrot bread*, and eaten several bowls of shredded carrots, and still had a ton left.

I want to cook a lot more in this new year, and more healthier foods too. I'm particularly excited about using another of my Christmas presents, this new cookbook:

For the record, I am not a vegetarian anymore. I ate two dozen raw oysters when we were in New Orleans for Christmas, and, shrimp and okra at my aunt's house on Christmas eve. Back in September, my initial reasoning for stopping eating meat, was that I didn't want to contribute to the animal suffering and cruelty of the meat industry. I thought a bunch about oysters, trying to decide whether they are sentient beings and capable of suffering, and I don't believe that they are. Same with clams and mussels. I didn't feel bad at all about eating oysters - I honestly feel much worse about eating dairy, which is something I need to work on cutting out - and I'm not willing to keep them out of my diet in order to keep the vegetarian label, because I don't care much about that. What I care about is that I feel ethically ok with my diet choices. It's a work in progress. (The shrimp though, I keep going back and forth about. They do have tiny brains. I'm not going to eat them again unless I find something to really persuade me.)

*Here's the carrot bread recipe that I used. I substituted applesauce for eggs and blackstrap molasses for honey. It was a decent way to use up shredded carrots, but I can't imagine it tasting good with zucchini.