Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad

Despite my (nominal) efforts to stay fairly healthy, I still fall behind sometimes with the simplicity of seamlessweb and the abundance of 5 dollar chinese lunch specials.  I guess I went too many days without vitamin c/greens because I have recently succumbed to a nasty cold.  This cold really hit hard and has me lying in bed and craving and eating so (too) much (hot and sour) soup.  Desperate to restore some balance to my diet I decided to go for a good mix of vitamin c and greens.

Start with:

lettuce of your choice

Butternut Squash (I bought mine already peeled and cut up--pretty cheap at TJ and really worth it to avoid to hassle of cutting up a squash!)

Olive Oil, salt, pepper, hot paprika

Either: Dried Currants, Cherries, Craisins, Golden Raisins

Nuts (I've still got an abundance of TJ's sliced almonds so I went with those)

Goat Cheese

1 can of chickpeas

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and cut up the squash into small pieces.  Cover in olive oil, salt, pepper and hot paprika.

Roast for about 20-25 minutes stirring once.  The squash should be tender and slightly caramelized. (It's hard to resist eating the pan once you've tasted one to "see if it's ready"!)

They should look like this:

While the squash is in the oven, rinse off the chickpeas.

Place the lettuce in a bowl and in a circle place: a small handful of goat cheese crumbles, nuts, dried fruit, the squash, and chickpeas

As for the dressing, drizzling olive oil and balsamic should work fine but I go with an easy dressing with an olive oil base+ a dash of: grey poupon, honey, lemon, red wine vinegar, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper

It's easy, you can play with the proportions until you get something that tastes good and goes with every salad, and it stays fresh in the fridge for a loooong time!