I’m an epically excited about my new chopping board. Yes, I know what you are thinking. How can you get excited about a chopping board? It’s easy. It means I can now actually chop stuff. And make things. It’s a beautiful piece of wood that weighs a ton. It nearly took my right arm on my walk home yesterday. But it’s so lovely and there is so much potential around it that I can help but smile every time I walk past it.

I wrote the above this morning. The chopping board is still making me smile but in a twist of universe karma my knives arrived this afternoon. Honestly, today just couldn’t get any better. So tonight, for the first time since mid August I made myself a dinner that included chopping things and sauteing things. It was almost total bliss. (For the record, total bliss right now would be making cake – craving – but in that department I’m still sadly lacking.)

It wasn’t a terribly exciting dinner, just roasted butternut salad. But everything about it was superb. I roasted the butternut with the skin on. I’m sometimes partial to skin, sometimes not. I left my peeler back home (I question now why) so skin on seemed miles easier. I drizzled it with a little olive oil and some black pepper. If you have garlic to hand (I don’t yet) I’d throw some cloves in too.

 

Whilst that was roasting I elegantly placed some leaves on a plate (elegantly being code for chucked generously) and added some sun-dried tomatoes and feta. (I would normally be a little purist about this salad and not add the tomatoes but I can’t seem to get enough of these at the moment and so am eating them on almost everything.) For the leaves I chose mostly rocket with some lettuce variations thrown in for good measure.

 

In a saute pan I then heated some pumpkin seeds (I say heated because as I am working from a hob and not gas things took a long while to get going) and added in some bresaola that was skulking in the back of the fridge looking grumpy.  Once the pan had heated I added a little olive oil and fried it all together. Once the butternut was done I dumped it and the bresaola/seed mix onto the leaves. Et voila. Instant dinner happiness.