Squash Chips

Ugh, is it Friday yet? I am burned out from this week already, work has been so busy with overtime and not a moment to even catch my breath. And it’s going to get worse over the next 3 days as we approach a huge deadline this weekend, most likely 12 hour days which I’m not looking forward to at all. It’s been really hard to not feel overwhelmed this week knowing I won’t have a weekend working late overtime hours Friday, most of Saturday, then a half marathon Sunday – yikes! I was really looking forward to the half when I signed up for it, now I just want a down weekend at home for a change! I appreciate the overtime, but…

My eats have been less that exciting with so much going on, mainly packed smoothies and salads to go from Whole Foods.

I like the ANDI nutrition rating labels over the salad bar ingredients and find myself loading my salad with the higher number ingredients like kale, radishes, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli, hoping the nutrient boosts will help me survive my insane week.

I did get a little play time in the kitchen last weekend which seems like ages ago now! I still have a ton of garden freebie squashes piled up in my kitchen and used a few to make Zucchini Crunchies from Kristen Suzanne’s Raw Snacks and Sides book.

The recipe is pretty simple, create a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, and spices to coat squash slices in before dehydrating in a food dehydrator.

And I ended up with a huge bowl of squash slices.

Then I decided to get creative with a yellow squash using a veggie peeler to create squash ribbons to dehydrate as well.

All this squash loaded my 9 tray Excalibur dehydrator easily!

After 18-hours or drying, I had a lot of crunchy chips.

The squash ribbons were okay, but a little too thin and light, not satisfying as a snack. They’d be better as a crunchy salad topping.

The zucchini chips are delicious, nice level of tang and seasonings with a satisfying crunch.

A great alternative to pricey raw crackers and wonderful way to use up excess zucchini. They were a little time consuming to prepare, but have been great for emergency work snacks during all the overtime hours I’m pulling this week. And a reminder that I need to explore more recipes from Kirsten’s book!