Baked Squash & Skillet Fail

This week is slugging and mostly because of my long “to do” list constantly running in the background. I love the holidays, but they can bring a lot of stress! I did finally finish my Christmas cards. Now I just need to finish my gift list, shopping, meal planning, family planning… ugh! Since this week has been chaotic, I’ve been falling back to my old, faithful lunches of monster salads. It makes it easy when I can throw together a huge salad to store in the fridge and pull servings from for a few days. For today’s salad, I dressed it with Gena’s Carrot Miso Dressing because I always have the ingredients on hand and it takes just seconds to through them in a blender. And for such an easy dressing, it’s very tasty!

I’m not the only one strung out this week, my poor dog was pretty tweaked when I picked her up from my dog-sitting mother after work. Turns out she had a day full of excitement being chased by hanging out with my young nieces and barking at my mom’s house keeper.

She’s gonna need a long, relaxing walk tonight.

When I got home, I had to try an experiment that popped into my head earlier today. I wanted to try The Twins dessert socca, but using an ingredient I’ve been neglecting in my pantry in place of the garbanzo flour.

Trader Joe’s peanut flour. The method to the madness was to create a Reeses-like flat bread lacking in fat and refined sugar. Seems logical, right? But I wanted to try it the speedy skillet way which seemed to be going well…

Until I tried to flip it.

Oops! Seems peanut flour is considerably more gooey and thicker than garbanzo flour. But it wasn’t a total loss.

What I ended up with was a gooey, peanuty and chocolaty custard that wasn’t bad. I think I’m on to something with this peanut butter cup custard and will keep experimenting. :-)

I also hacked into a kabocha squash to bake for dinner and it’s always a nerve-racking experience chopping up tough squashes like this one.

I’m always afraid the knife will slip and next thing I know I’m in the ER getting fingers sewed back on. But our trusty 10″ chef’s knife has proven pivotal for these endeavors.

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We used to have more expensive Henkel knives that were okay, well they were prettier. But seemed to require more sharpening and something about the handle grips didn’t jive right with me. When Victorinox knifes were featured on America’s Test Kitchen and very highly rated for the price, we invested in some and have been very happy so far. They’re not the prettiest knifes with the clunky, plastic handle. But the price is right, they have great grip and are easier to clean. The 8″ and 10″ chef’s knives are perfect for hacking through winter squash after winter squash.

Anyway, I tossed the slices with a little coconut oil and salt, then baked for 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Paired with steamed and lightly salted broccoli, I had a perfectly light dinner after sampling my peanut flour flop. :-)