Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad

We all know (and subsequently adore) Deb from Smitten Kitchen. I’ve been using her website so much this year that I’ve started to think we’re personal friends. Just the other night, the roommate did a Google search and Deb’s blog popped up. “She’s the one that cooks in that tiny kitchen with a toddler wrapped around her leg!” I said. Cat nodded as if Deb comes over for dinner (child in tow) once a month. I guess in a way she does, now that I’ve been making her dishes so frequently. This weekend we were blessed with a Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad.

If heaven came in the form of butternut squash, this would be it. Such a simple dish Deb recreated from Molly @ Orangette. If you like the nutty taste tamari gives you (one of the main ingredients in hummus), then you’ll fall crazy for this one. A bit of onion, a can of chickpeas, baked squash and you’re basically on your way.

I thought of my mother when I tossed together these ingredients and poured them into this glass bowl. I’m not sure whether my mother is a fan of squash, but she gave me this bowl a few years back. I use it sparingly, as I often place most of my food into Tupperware dishes for transportation.

However, coveting the goods in this rose-colored dish gave it flair and placed me back into the kitchen of my hometown. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I saw this dish filled to the brim with tuna-noodle-casserole (my favorite growing up). The bowl is nothing fancy, but I imagine how wonderful it would be to pass it down to my daughter someday.

Hopefully, she can cook. Hopefully, she’ll like squash. And hopefully, she’ll invite her parents over for dinner often.