Squash Tahini Salad

Lunch & Dinner

Oct 16

Recently, Joe and I have been installing a new Saturday morning tradition. Now that it is Fall and the Jersey shore beach season is over (although, I do love Fall weekends there…) we are actually NY residents and at home for the weekends. Listen, I love this city, but from the months of June – August, I am putting in as much effort as possible to be on the beach versus walking the sweltering sidewalks of this concrete jungle. Since our weekday mornings consist of a minuscule five minutes together (if that) before Joe runs off to the gym, we are trying to spend more time relaxing and enjoying one’s companies on the weekend mornings.

With that, I of course wanted to instill some new traditions (can you tell I love my traditions!?). What starts with a coffee date at our favorite local coffee shop, continues on a walk around our neighborhood choosing to continuously take a path we haven’t before. No matter what, though, we always end up at the same place: our local farmer’s market. There is something about shopping for ingredients at a farmer’s market that brings me so much joy. It is, ideally, how we should all be grocery shopping: buying local ingredients that are in season. However, this is rarely the norm for me. Given that I’m usually away on the weekends and the ease of grocery shopping at conventional larger stores is typically more convenient, it is rare that my week’s haul is coming from a market.

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In an effort to change that, a visit to our local organic farmer’s stand has become a part of our Saturday mornings. With the affordable deals and the constant influx of fresh and new produce, it brings me a lot of joy to stock up on ingredients for the week. This past weekend they had a large box of different kinds of squashes and, given that I love any sort of fall vegetable, I grabbed a variety. Pumpkin, kabocha, acorn, butternut, etc. You name it, I grabbed it. With a bowl full of squash on our counter and a fridge full of kale (I can’t say no to $3 for a massive organic bunch…), Saturday lunch became a no-brainer. Another part of our Saturday routine is typically a homemade lunch in the apartment. Since we spend majority of our weekend dinners exploring different restaurants in NYC, or continuously visiting the same for our Friday night traditions (is it clear yet that I’m a controlling planner??), we try to save money on our weekend breakfasts and lunches. I grabbed the freshly purchased farmer’s markets ingredients and rummaged through our pantry and fridge to find the remaining items to make our feast. Grabbing other ingredients that I always have (avocado, dates, pecans, chickpeas, and tahini), I knew this was going to be a good one.

After just a bit of cooking, which you’re able to do simultaneously given that you’re roasting the squash and chickpeas while preparing the other items, this lunch came together to make the perfectly fall-flavored hearty and nutritious salad. Fancy enough for a weekend meal or the perfect cure to your sad desk lunch during the week.