I think my husband was the first to try it—baked pumpkin slices. We all love pumpkin, but it can be a real pain to prepare—either you spend an hour baking whole pumpkins, or you peel and cube dangerously hard raw ones. These lovely slices, with the peel on, are easy to prepare and bake up quickly. They make a wonderful side dish with lentils or burgers (and probably go well with animal flesh, too, for the meat eaters among you).

Halve a pumpkin or other winter squash. Scoop out the seeds. Slice each half into wedges about 1.5 cm thick. Place on an oiled baking sheet, flipping each slice once to make sure it’s coated with oil on both sides. Sprinkle with coarse salt, freshly ground pepper, and sesame seeds. Bake at 190°C (375°F) for 20-30 minutes.

“So, should I put this pizza in the freezer for next week?”

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Um. There’s no room here.”

The freezer was already full of ready-made meals waiting for a day when they were needed. We’ve gotten into such a habit of making extra to throw into the freezer, that we’ve outstripped our need for those “heat and eat” meals.

So I took a vacation yesterday.

Dinner was baked beans made in the bread oven last week, reheated, served over rice. Fried eggs on the side. A 15-minute meal. And a few extra minutes to roll out a pie dough I made earlier in the week, fill it with gooseberries from the freezer and throw it in the oven. Felt like cheating.

Instead of cooking, I pottered around the yard on the unseasonally warm day, played the piano, paid a social visit to the goats, and did a little writing.

Excellent!