Harvest Monday - slow cooked butternut squash

This week I thought I'd dust off (literally) the slow cooker. We've had it for ages but never really got into the swing of using it, hence a thick layer of dust I had to clean off, yuk!

Anyway, I'd happened across a recipe on the the web that included squash (and looked easy - important!) which inspired me to give the cooker go again. I didn't have exactly all the ingredients so varied it a bit -

• Roughly Chopped onion and garlic
• 1 tsp each of ground cumin, paprika, ginger
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 tin chickpeas
• Small cubed butternut squash
• Handful of chopped dates (instead of apricots)

Fry the onion, garlic and spices for a bit then add the tomatoes, and heat until boiling

Meanwhile cube the butternut squash and add to the slow cooker pan with the drained chickpeas and chopped dates

Add the sauce to the slow cooker and cook on high for 4 hours.

That's it! Easy peasy.

 

I was originally going to use two small squashes but actually the butternut on its own produced enough flesh so I cubed the other one and froze it instead

Before - Squash, chickpeas, dates in the slow cooker

Cooked in 4 hours! I was quite surprised it only took that long.

Served with quinoa and toasted cashews, yummy

I'll definitely try and use the cooker more often now, this recipe seems like it could be used as a base and just varied a bit each time. I'm not sure about how the different temperatures (low, medium high) affect cooking times yet e.g this took 4 hours on high but how long would it take on medium or low? So will have to do some research.

Yesterday we had a similar meal but cooked in the oven - we didn't plan ahead enough and there wasn't time to use the slow cooker, doh. This time it was squash with kidney beans, plus cheesy wedges, mmm.

I've had a couple of small harvests this week - a bit of kale (these are quite small leaves though)

More corn salad

And today I brought some onions back from the allotment shed (there's probably about the same amount left)

I was after some more sweet chestnuts, so on Saturday we had a walk down to Whitlingham country park, which is just on the edge of Norwich. I couldn't remember if there were any chestnut trees....turns out there aren't many! The only ones we found didn't have anything worth harvesting. But we did get a few sloes.

And found a cute bear we hadn't seen before, aah

 

So, my search for more chestnuts will have to carry on elsewhere!

Thanks for reading this week. Linking in with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres

 

 

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