A Simple Friday Dinner
At home. A simple Friday dinner at home. Fridays deserve super easy nourishing dinners. (And a glass of crisp white wine!).
Baked acorn squash!
You can use any little pumpkin. I love acorn squash for the lovely scalloped edges.
Cut in half and scoop out the seeds. Be careful not to pierce the skin. Sit the halves on their flat bottoms in a baking dish.
Into the cavity I place a teaspoon of salted butter, a slice of bacon and a little local honey. (The options are unlimited but you will need a little fat and gentle flavors – this dish is all about the taste of sweet autumn pumpkin). And simplicity!!
Gently place in the middle of the oven – be careful not to let those pumpkin halves fall over.
Bake for a good hour on 360F. Until soft.
Often I eat my little pumpkin dinner just like this with a spoon.
Or, after you have baked the little pumpkins, you can fill them with wild rice, top with diced red onion and serve on a bed of finely sliced kale and roasted walnuts with a light red wine vinaigrette.
The wheat is above ground! Sprouted. Greening up! Away!
The fields have had a few good rains and warm days.
Have a lovely weekend.
Don’t forget to 🌟 live simply so our planet can live large!
Cecilia
35 Comments on “A Simple Friday Dinner”
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Those look stunning! That wheat was quick.
Really quick I thought. But it is so warm!
Amazing – it’s really warm in Europe too. October had September weather.
This looks delish and so easy! I will try it soon. I love the local honey, wild rice and walnut suggestions, we’ll see what I come up with.
On Halloween night, I wanted to make butternut squash lasagna for friends. While searching online for recipe ideas, your butternut squash spinach lasagna was the first one I saw, and exactly what I wanted. I made a bechamel sauce, roasted butternut and delicata squashes, sautéed a little spinach with shallots and threw it all in a 9×13 pan to bake while we were handing out candy to our trick-or-treaters. Everyone loved it! Thanks for the inspiration and the reminder to get creative with the beautiful fall squashes so abundant in Illinois in the autumn.
The wind is crazy today! I hope all your hatches are securely battened down!!!
This is the best kind of comment!! I love that you fed your friends that good local food! I would use kale too but am waiting for the next crop to grow in the glasshouse!
My kind of dinner! I put butter, a pinch of both nutmeg and cinnamon, and dark brown sugar in mine.
Oh my! That nutmeg would lift it beautifully! Thank you Sandy!
I love a simple and nourishing Friday night dinner and this fits the bill perfectly. and they are so beautiful. good news about the wheat
Good morning Beth! I am so happy we got a few warm weeks for the wheat to establish!
This sounds tasty, except I would need to find a vegetarian alternative to bacon. I wonder what would work, perhaps some mature cheddar cheese. Especially with the crisp white wine! I’m avoiding alcohol at the moment as I’m on two courses of antibiotics to get rid of a horrible ear infection. Thankfully the pain has gone but I feel like I’m hearing through cotton wool. It must be awful to be completely deaf!
No wine for you then! I hope your ear gets better soon that sounds painful!
You don’t really need the bacon. It is just another fat and I love the crunch. I am tempted to add sage to the butter and see if it goes crunchy? It would be great with the pumpkin.
Oh, crisp up the sage leaves and sprinkle on top, I do that when we have squash or pumpkin ravioli, so good!
I love crispy salty sage!
Thank you 🙂 The antibiotics have done their work. Glad to live in a country with good (and free!) access to healthcare.
Sage butter and pumpkin sounds like an excellent combination.
So glad!
What about applewood smoked cheddar, it might give it a little bacon-ish flavour
Great idea! I love applewood smoked cheddar. Especially in a fresh bread roll with some chilli jam. My mouth is watering now!
Chili jam! I don’t think I have ever made that!
The fields have transformed so quickly and are lovely with what’s to come! I often do much the same as your acorn recipe with delicata squash and recently I’ve been roasting up spaghetti squash to use as a base for all sorts of toppings. I even recently made spaghetti squash enchiladas that were really good with rice and beans, and of course all the great additions- sour cream/avocado/chopped spring onion/olives…
YUM- we will be having this delicious and simple dinner this week! Thanks xoxoxo
Yes, acorn and butternut squash are so sweet and easy to cook. I love butternut squash with chick peas. You can roast the chick peas with olive oi, s&p on the pan next to the squash and then eat them together. Delicious!
I do something similar with acorn squash. I make a filling from ground turkey and some chopped carrots, kale, and pine nuts and sweeten it a bit with maple syrup. I don’t know know why I never thought of using little pumpkins!
The addition of the bacon is brilliant. I’ve made it with sugar and butter but not the bacon, which seems like it would add so much. I also like Laura’s suggestion of ground turkey and other bits. I’m going to try both of them!
I’m on my way out to buy the ingredients…….sounds perfect
Let me know how you like it!!
Awesome flavour texture combos… and that is what makes homemade food the best. We’ve planted 5 lots of pumpkin seedlings… fingers crossed for homegrown pumpkins this year that we get to eat with rather than birds or rodents.
I will cross my fingers for you too!
This is really delicious! I love a meal like this on a cold November night.
And we are still not cold! But I am sure it will come!
I couldn’t believe it, but Saturday and Sunday were both 73 degree days; we grilled outside and ate outside! This morning, it is already over 60 degrees.
That is so warm.
I have small pumpkins ‘curing’ on the laundry bench. I like them cut in half and the seeds scooped out, drizzled with oil and dusted witha
bit of cinnamon and the hole filled with chopped tart apple and bacon.
Oh wow! That sounds divine!
Celia, I am heading out to the garden to gather some acorn squash. We had the summer that never ended – here in the lower mainland of British Columbia. Four months without rain. Hand watering saved the vegetables and they rewarded our care with spectacular results. Your delicious recipe has inspired me. Bon Appetit Virginia
The joy of harvesting from your own garden! I look forward to seeing how they turned out!