Pink Banana Squash

Have you ever seen a squash like this before? Its variety is commonly known as a banana squash. Believe it or not, this as the smallest of the banana squash when I was at the produce stand a month ago. I paid 33 cents per pound, which I think is a pretty good price for fresh veggies these days. I'm going to hack into it today, so I wanted to show it to you while I could. While this one is a pink banana squash, there are also blue-green and all-white varieties.

Banana squash are hard-skinned, so are considered to be long-keepers. As you may have noticed, it's not the most attractive of the squashes. Perhaps that explains why you just don't see these in markets much these days. The squash that seem to populate the produce bins in autumn in my grocery stores are all the thinner-skinned and much more attractive squash. Those also happen to be the short-keepers.

This one is almost 2 feet in length and weighs about 8 pounds. I believe that I'll be able to get about 5 family meals out of this one squash. Once the squash is cut, any unused/uncooked portion will keep in the refrigerator for up to 10 days. 



I could have kept this longer. However, I needed some vegetables for our dinners this week and this one was taking up a large share of the food storage space. While I said banana squash is hard-skinned, the shell is not as difficult to cut as Hubbard squash, if you're familiar with that variety. I was able to cut this one into 8-inch chunks, using my serrated bread knife. Its interior flesh is deep-orange and about 1  1/4 inches thick all around.

You may have bought banana squash from the produce department of your market at some point. Markets used to regularly sell 4 to 6-inch cut chunks of banana squash which were over-wrapped in plastic wrap. Back when I was single and living on my own, cut pieces of banana squash were the cheapest fresh vegetable in the produce department. As I had very little money in those days, I ate quite a lot of this variety of squash.

Banana squash are sweet and mild-flavored. I'll be using this one in soup, oven-roasted in chunks, and baked and mashed.

Cheap & Cheerful Suppers for November

As you know, on Tuesday, I went to Fred Meyer to get a free turkey. I made my minimum-spend primarily on non-food items, but I also bought 6 cans of cream of mushroom soup, 4 bottles of sparkling cider, 4 half-gallons of milk, some nutmeg from the bulk bins, and a bag of mini marshmallows, spending $16.92, along with my free turkey. I also went to Dollar Tree and bought 1 box of crackers, spending $1. This brings my November spending up to $130.35. I still need to go to one other store this month. Hopefully I can arrange for time with the car tomorrow morning and will take care of that last bit of shopping.

Friday
French toast
sweet potato fries
vanilla yogurt
orange juice

Saturday
assorted leftovers from dim sum with friends earlier in the day
scrambled eggs
steamed carrots
lentil sprout salad

Sunday
fried homemade flour tortillas, topped with
refried beans
hubbard squash

Monday
bean and squash soup, using all leftovers
leftover rice and egg casserole
orange wedges
blackberry cobbler

Tuesday (daughter's night)
pasta smothered with chicken in sage and winter squash sauce
orange wedges
leftover cobbler

Wednesday (other daughter was sick, so I stepped in for her at the last moment)
scrambled eggs with sausage, onions, garlic, and radish greens (from the trough planter on the deck)
fried brown rice and lentil sprouts
carrot sticks

Thursday
scratch waffles and syrup
scrambled eggs
orange wedges


I wasn't really in a cooking mood last night, so I made a batch of waffles. I have never bought pancake or biscuit mix, but have always made pancakes and waffles with a scratch batter. Mixing my own batter is really not any trouble and saves money over buying the boxed mixes. 

Cost of scratch waffles
Boxed biscuit mix contains flour, shortening, baking powder (or equivalent), salt, and sugar. Walmart sells a Great Value Biscuit Mix, 40-oz. for $2.50. This size box makes about 50 waffles, if following the Betty Crocker recipe on the Bisquick recipe site. Not including the egg, milk, and additional oil required by the recipe, the mix for a 12-waffle batch costs about 54 cents, or a single waffle about 5 cents. When I make waffles from scratch, my batter for an 8-waffle batch costs about 25 cents, not including the egg, milk, and 2 tablespoons of oil to make the comparison close to equal, for a cost of about 3 cents per each waffle's basic ingredients. In addition, my waffles are Belgian-style, so they are thicker and denser than the waffles on the Betty Crocker site. An 8-waffle batch is the right amount for our family of 4 for one meal. So, my savings for one family meal is about 16 cents. 16 cents doesn't sound like much. However, if I save 16 cents on each dinner for a year, I will have an extra $58 in my pocket. I recognize that you may have more lucrative things to do with your time than I do, so this savings may not be as meaningful to you.

Convenience factor of scratch vs. boxed waffles
A person still needs to add egg, a liquid (usually milk), plus additional oil if making waffles with a commercial biscuit mix -- that's a combination of 4 ingredients. The Betty Crocker website says that the prep time is 15 minutes. I can't imagine it taking 15 minutes to break an egg and measure oil, mix, and milk. So let's say using a mix takes 7 minutes. My own pancake/waffle recipe calls for flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, oil, egg, and milk/water, for a total of 7 ingredients, just 3 more than using a boxed mix. Since I've memorized the "recipe" (it's a rather loose recipe), the measuring and mixing process goes very quickly, faster than my waffle iron can preheat, in fact. I estimate that it takes about 9 minutes to measure and add all 7 ingredients, or 2 additional minutes. So, I save 8 cents per extra minute of time for making scratch waffles over boxed mix. 8 cents per minute works out to $4.80 per hour, if I were doing similar cost-saving tasks for an entire hour. Considering I probably waste at least an hour each day, spending the time to save money doesn't cut into my "real" money-earning time. For a batch of waffles, I think I can afford 2 extra minutes.

The taste of scratch waffles
Unless someone has been raised on commercial biscuit mix waffles, and therefore only feels that type of waffle would be palatable, scratch waffles have the potential to be so much tastier, heartier, and more nutritious than boxed mix ones. So, I save money and serve a better waffle by mixing a batter from scratch.


Onto other meal-subjects -- We are definitely into orange vegetable season. Sweet potatoes, squash, and carrots made into our dinners on 6 out of 7 nights this week. We still have some greens in the garden and on the deck, as well as the lentil sprouts and kale microgreens in the kitchen. The garden greens may be in the last week of their season, however.

For those of you who live where snow is a usual item in the winter forecast, it may be difficult to understand my excitement over next week's forecast for the Seattle area. We might get snow on Thanksgiving weekend! To put this in perspective for my area, we still have a few green leaves on otherwise deciduous trees and vines in the yard, and one of our rhododendron bushes has blossoms on it. A lot can change in a weather forecast in the PNW, so time will tell.


So, how was your week of meals? What was on your menu this past week? Anything especially good? Have you found that you're using a lot more orange vegetables this month, too?

Wishing you all a lovely, weekend!