Baked Banana Squash

It’s been a laid back Saturday of running, catching up with house projects, shopping, laundry, gardening, office paperwork, and lots of playing with this little guy.

I also re-imaged my laptop with Windows 8 and still getting the hang of it. It’s very different from Windows 7 and I’ll be testing it for awhile before loading it onto our blogging/gaming PC.

I also threw together a messy spinach salad for lunch coated with a hummus dressing and hemp seeds.

Simple and tasty, one of my favorite fast meals.

Things did not get interesting until dinner when I finally decided to cut into the banana squash I picked up at Apple Hill.

The squash is huge, about the size of a large watermelon and could easily have 12+ servings. And it’s a good source of vitamins A and C. Since this is my first time trying it, I decided to just bake it with a little seasoning to try the squashes flavor. But putting seeded and peeled chunks into stews seems to be a popular use of it too.

To bake it, I chopped it into fourths and seeded it since the halves were too big to put on a baking sheet!

And just put cut side down on a greased baking sheet and baked at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes – until the skin was soft enough to be easily stabbed with a fork.

Then sliced the squash into single serving chunks with the skin on and added a drizzle of coconut oil and pumpkin pie seasoning before serving.

I didn’t really have a meal plan for tonight’s dinner, but had two zucchinis that needed to be used up for a side dish and spiral sliced them into angel hair noodles while the squash was baking.

Then mixed the zucchini noodles with corn and my Avocado Ginger Dressing for an, uh, interesting looking side dish. :-)

Making dinner a fun mesh for a casual Saturday night.

The squash was delicious! It tastes like a sweeter version of a pumpkin or butternut squash with a hearty and filling texture. It was sweet and warm with a slight cinnamon and nutmeg spice, perfect for a fall dinner.

While my interesting side dish concoction was also good, creamy and tangy with a slightly sweet crunch from the corn. The thin angel hair zucchini noodles were soft and delicate, not too crunchy or raw-like, and absorbed the avocado dressing nicely.

Have you ever tried banana squash?