CRUNCHY Butternut Squash Chips (GAPS, SCD, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free)

This, my friends, is a bowl of truly crunchy heaven!

When you are on GAPS, or many other diets, you seriously lack the crunch factor. There is the odd crispy thing, but there is no real crunch crunch. There’s the kind of crunch you get from a cracker, or the crunch you get from dried zucchini chips (which is a little on the chewy/leathery side) and of course there is the crunch you get from a carrot - but there nothing close to the crunch you get from a potato chip or a tortilla chip.
Until you make these little babies!
They are truly crunchy. And delicious. And even though somewhat labor intensive, not hard to do!

My family really, REALLY likes these! Even the ones that aren’t doing GAPS! Who would have ever thought that my kids would beg me for butternut squash anything on a regular basis? Not me, but here we are!

So, let’s get started!

This recipe only has two ingredients. The recipe is not so much in the ingredients however, it is in the method.

It does help to have a dehydrator to make it easier to make these chips, but an oven works too.

Butternut Squash Chips

Ingredients:

1 Butternut squash, preferably one with a long, straight neck

Ghee, or frying oil of choice

Equipment: Potato peeler, Mandoline or other slicer (you need something that produces thin, even slices,) a dehydrator (or oven,) and means to deep or pan fry, kitchen tongs.

Method:

Slice the butternut squash just where it begins to bulge outwards.
That is where the seeds usually start. We want to use the top part for chips.

You can also use the bottom part for chips, however, they will end up being thin-ish half moon shapes.  I generally hollow out the bottom part and place it in the freezer. Once I have collected a few, I defrost and stuff them with meat and veggies for dinner. Not only does it taste delicious, it also looks really cute, prepared in it’s own little butternut squash bowl!

   

Peel the top part of the squash. You generally have to go over the same spot a couple of times to get to the bright orange flesh, with no whitish skin left, or the green veins that sometimes run under the skin.

Slice on a mandoline. I have tried several different thicknesses and personally I prefer 1/8 of an inch. They don’t take too long to dry and they still make a pretty sturdy chip.
You can go a little thinner or a little thicker, but I really wouldn’t go thicker than 1/4 inch, as the puffing up later will be impeded if the chip is too thick.

 

  

Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and in batches, boil the squash slices. About 2 minutes per batch.

They should still be pretty firm when you pull them out and by no means cooked through. I use kitchen tongs to pull them out and they still stand up really well to that grabbing pressure. If they fall apart on you, you are cooking them for too long. We really just want to blanch them!
I usually blanch them in 4-5 batches. Make sure that you put them into the boiling water one by one, so none of them stick together going in!

Once blanched, layer them onto the trays of your dehydrator. I tend to wait until they have cooled down just enough for me to touch all the slices, then layer them in there. Process according to your dehydrator instructions until completely dry. Some will curl up, some won’t - it’s all good.

You can also lay them out in a single layer on cookie sheets and dry them on the lowest setting of your oven.

And this is what they will look like once done. Completely dry, somewhat hard, but in a leathery kind of way.

Now, the magic happens.
I have no photos of the actual frying process. There is a reason for that!

The reason is .... you need to be FAST. As in, split seconds fast, so there’s no way I could photograph and not have the chips burn.

I generally fry mine in a small pan with about an inch or so of ghee in it. You can use other oils or fats too. It all works.


Heat your fat to about 350-375 F.

Now, fry them, one by one. Yes, don’t be tempted to dump them all in, I guarantee you they will all burn as you can’t get them out fast enough.


So, one by one, using kitchen tongues again, place a dehydrated chip in the hot fat, almost instantly flip it around to the other side and them take it out. I am literally talking about a second on each side.
But in that second, magic happens. You will see the chip puff up, sometimes it will uncurl, and it will turn to a deep orange. Sometimes the color doesn’t look like it changed much, but it will continue cooking even after you pulled it out, so DO pull it out. They will turn into an orangey brown once they cool.


Place on a kitchen towel to drain the excess oil/fat.


Keep doing this, one by one.

If you leave them in to get really brown, they are still crispy, but the more “burnt” they become, the more bitter they will taste, and that’s not what we want. So, one second each side, remember?

See the difference in the photo below. The left one went too far, the right one is what you’re aiming for !

Below you can see how the chip changes from dehydrated state to fried state. See those lovely bubbles? That’s the crunch factor!

    

Dehydrated squash slice.                                     Fried chip from dehydrated slice.

And there you have it. I like to give a light shake of Herbamare over them and enjoy, either by themselves or with dips, salsa, as nachos, etc.

Yes,  these are a bit of work! But the good news is that because they are dehydrated, you don’t have to do ALL of the above every time you make them. You can make large batches of dehydrated slices and store them in an air tight container and fry them up pretty quickly whenever you want them!
And butternut squash season is coming, so they will be a lot cheaper too. Well worth stocking up on!

I generally store the dehydrated slices in an air-tight jar and then fry up as many as we will eat. However, if you are going to store the fried chips longer, make sure they're in an air-tight container or bag, otherwise they will lose some of their crunch!

Notes:

Since this is a little labor intensive, I did of course experiment with seemingly simpler ways. None of them worked out.
Here is what I’ve tried:

• I tried them fresh and fried, total flop. Literally. Nothing crispy about them at all!
• I tried them fresh (without the dehydrating step) both blanched and not blanched. Also didn’t work out. Except for making them paper thin ... but those don't hold up to much and they were quite hard to get to the right crispness without completely burning them. And no puffing up either.
• Tried them just soaked in water and then dehydrated and fried - got crispy and a little bit puffy but they also had an oddly bitter flavor, which I really didn’t care for!
  
  
  
  

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Happening Around Here Lately

1.) Storing paint.

The other day I had one of those forehead-smacking, why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of moments when I read somebody’s tip to storing acrylic paint!

Up until then, I would paint a little dot of the color in the bottle on top of the lid, so I could easily find my colors. The problem is, that it required me to open all the bottles, had to wait for the dot to dry before I could store them and quite often, depending on what light I had in the studio, the dots wouldn’t show the subtle color differences clearly enough!

Well, turns out there’s a much easier way!

Store them upside down!! No-brainer, right?

Not only does it make color recognition much easier, it also helps with easily dispensing the paint in the bottles that are less than all the way full. And, it also stops the paint from drying out if the cap happens to be on less than perfectly closed.

2.) A quote for today. This has been so true for me lately. Well, it’s true all the time, let’s say it has been more relevant lately!

“Sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith!”

-Margaret Shepard

 

3.) Inexpensive Light Box.

I used to have a lovely light box for tracing, embossing and pretty much anything I needed to have illuminated from behind. The last time I pulled it out of the cupboard to use, I saw that the D batteries had dumped all their not so lovely content all inside the light box and essentially irreparably ruined it.

When I went to look for a replacement, I remembered just HOW expensive these thing were. And honestly, I don’t really need anything terribly sophisticated - I just need something that doesn’t take up too much space and shines a reasonably bright light through various thicknesses of paper!

I came across this Crayola Light Up Tracing Pad and I thought I’d give it a try. It was less than half of what others cost, and with two young kids in the house, even if it didn’t work for me, it would get used plenty!

Well, let me tell you! I LOVE this thing!

It’s thin, it’s light, it stores away easily, it gives me what I need light-wise and I’ve used it a LOT for quite a few weeks now and I still love it!

What do I use it for? I find I use it for many things, but one of my main uses for a while was sketch transfer.

Well, when I first started doing faces, I realized that I was really holding back because I didn’t want to “ruin” the expensive paper with too much erasing. Yet, I found that if I sketched on cheap paper, I was more willing to experiment and go with the flow. If it didn’t work out, nothing much was lost!

And as a beginner sketcher, you HAVE to practice and have to be willing to make mistakes and “loosen” your wrist and all that. And every once in a while, even while just playing around, you’d manage to create something you actually liked and then how do you get it to your good paper?

So, once I had it sketched onto the cheap paper and to my satisfaction, I would then use the light box to trace it onto my hot-press watercolor paper. Double the work? Yes. But it’s worth it to me!

And as I grew/grow more confident, the less I need to do the double sketching.

4.) The big 20/20 event is starting on March 1st! I you haven’t heard yet, I have gotten together with some really talented ladies and we put together 'The Big 20/20 Event'.

The event itself is all about creativity, ideas, instructions and all things inspirational. we have got a whole host of gorgeous contributors on our team, and they have some fantastic tutorials to share with you.

Here is a sneak peak of what I will be giving one of my tutorials on.  Yep, I’m doing two!

5.) Yum!

These are grain-free/paleo Spaetzle! So easy to make, so yummy!

I slightly modified this recipe for Paleo Pasta and prepared it in the traditional “Spaetzle way” with the most delicious result. And much less work than pasta!

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Happening around here lately

1. Practicing Gratitude.

I’ve never much liked the expression “an attitude of gratitude.” It doesn’t resonate with me. To me attitude is something you “put on”, like an external thing you adopt. The saying even goes “adopting an attitude of ...” Again, its’ like something that is not from you or in you -  and you’re just trying it on for a while. And an attitude doesn’t necessarily denote an action to me - it’s more of a concept.   “Practicing gratitude” suits me better. Because to me it is a practice - you actually DO it over and over until it becomes you and you become it! By practicing every single day, you become a grateful person - a grateful person that practices gratitude every single day! The “goal” and the journey are the same here! From very early on, I have had the practice with my children, to snuggle up before bed, look back on the day, remember or list what happened, what we liked, what we didn’t like so much, what we are grateful for, etc. As they are older now, we have really started to focus a little bit more on the actual practice of gratitude. Not only the forming of a

mindset, but hopefully the habit of a life time. I have a gratitude journal in my bedside table, and I write in it as often as I can. My kids have little gratitude journals too.  They write in them if and when they remember to.

I also used to have a list on the fridge. A few month ago, I went big however, covered the refrigerator in some chalk board vinyl and invited the kids to participate in writing their gratitude on the gratitude chalk board too.

It has been such fun!

And yes, occasionally we swipe against it and end up wearing our chalky gratitude, but it’s all good!

I LOVE reading the things the kids come up with! The board alone is an awesome read, but their little journals are great in themselves. Max is short and sweet, often with just daily one word entries, of whatever he felt grateful for that day. Quite often it can be a thing or something practical.

Anna tends to be a little more elaborate. She has longer entries and mostly they are about people or experiences related to people!

I also often find my kids standing in front of the board and reading out all the things we have written down over time, which just makes us feel the gratitude all over again as they do it!

And when the board gets all filled up, we wipe it and start all over. Not before I take a few pictures though!

 

2. Blissful aroma.

As I type, the house is filled with the blissful aroma of apple butter bubbling away in my crockpot. We’ve had some amazing organic apples from Azure this year, for around 50 cents per pound (and there were many many pounds!)  and I have been canning our year’s supply of ever so yummy homemade, unsweetened applesauce (and some apple jelly) over the last few weeks and now I’m using the last of the apples to make a few batches of apple butter. It’s such an easy thing to do in the crockpot and it makes your house smell oh so good!

 

3. Spreading Joy.

I always like to make it a point to do some random acts of kindness. Sometimes they are slightly more planned, sometimes they are very random and spontaneous. This weekend they were a bit of both!

Some of my fellow “flyers” were inspired by Kelly Rae Robert’s kindness mission and got together to love-bomb the world! I was only too happy to join in! You can read more about it here. So today, I left a few of those lovely little print out’s around my neighborhood. Our community mail boxes looked like they need some art loving, as did a couple of park benches and some lamp posts!

 

 

I also love the practice of love/kindness pebbles, which I left the last of today as I went about my business.

Those are little pebbles with words of love, appreciation or inspiration on them. Like "you are loved”, or “I love you”, or “smile!”, “Ease. Joy. Glory”, etc. You drop these pebbles wherever and whenever you feel inspired to. In people’s pockets, on their desk, in their bag, at the checkout stand, wherever somebody will find it later. The idea is that it will bring a smile on their face and a little wondering as to who it might be from!

I’ll be decorating another batch of pebbles soon!

 

4. Little pleasures

 

Reading and re-reading this at the moment!

Hello, yummy veggie rainbow juice, fresh from the garden!

 

This makes me happy:

 

These make me happy too:

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The Long Lost Blogger

Wow, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted here!

It has been BUSY around here! Not that that’s new or different!

Catching you up will be a long and picture rich post, but here we go!

 

On top of the regular scheduled “programming” around our house, I’ve been busy with this:

 

 

My “babies” turned eight years old! (Seriously?! When did that happen?!) And we had a party! And it was an awesome party! And of course there were the cakes!

 

Anna wanted a Lalaloopsy cake, with figures she could keep! So, that was an easy one! Making all the buttons, butterflies and flowers was fun and quite easy - and then I just topped it off with some mini Lalaloopsies!

 

 

 

Max, of course, wanted an Angry Birds cake again, this time with the star wars theme! He wanted to be able to eat everything, so I made everything edible!

 

We also had a bouncy castle, and Daddy was manning the cotton candy machine and lots of friends came and everyone had a lot of fun!

 

 

 

 

And then there is also a lot of this!

 

 

Bumper crops, canning, freezing, prepping, freezing, jam making, drying, freezing,  pie filling making, apple sauce making, jam making, fermenting, you name it and I’ve done a LOT of it this year!

 

And of course, now there is also a whole lot of this

 

 

 

Unfortunately, our latest hard frost took out most of the zucchinis, tomatoes, peppers and egg plants. But a lot of the more cold hardy things have sprung up and are doing great! And since we have generally very mild winters, it’s prime gardening season around here even now!

 

And then there was the purging, because all of that wasn’t quite enough! I got some kind of bug which I like to call “no room left behind”, which basically includes every room, every cupboard, every box/basket, etc sorted through, organized, purged (if applicable) and cleaned out.

I am mostly through the house now (except for my husband’s office - I’m calling that one a lost cause ...) with only a couple more areas left to do!

It’s an ongoing thing really, but it is amazing how much accumulates in a family of hoarders  organizationally challenged people, even when I try to stay on top of it on a regular basis! And it always seems to be such a big deal with the husband and the kids, there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth and all that!
Even though, once we are through it, all of them are quite clear that they feel much better without all their rooms/lives in a hot mess and all cluttered up! Go figure!

 

Anyway, then Thanksgiving happened, with family staying in town for a while and we were in the rather more unique position of also incorporating a little of Hannukah into our Thanksgiving celebration, making it a once in a lifetime Thanksgivukkah! With a variety of allergies running high in the extended family, it was an interesting experience, making all the familiar, expected and traditional goodies, while keeping everyone happy and healthy!

We had gluten-free Rugalach (nuts and honey as well as poppy seed filling,) gluten-free corn casserole, the turkey of course, dairy and gluten-free gravy, dairy-free and regular mashed potatoes, potato cakes with apple sauce, lingon berry and cranberry sauce and speaghetti squash! For dessert with had gluten-free dutch apple pie, marshmallow dreidels, gluten-free chocolate and cookie acorns. Wondering what our dietary restrictions are when we all get together? No dairy, no gluten, no coconut or derivatives, no soy or derivatives, no garlic, no fish, no artificial sweeteners and no red peppers and no beans. Those are the bigger ones, not including the “dislikes” that everyone brings along too!
Anyway, as you can see, we had a feast and everyone was safe and happy!

I have taken a bunch of Thanksgiving photos, but I can’t find them right now, so this will serve as a place holder for me to add them later! It’s not like I don’t have a lot of other photos for you to look at in this post!

 

And now of course we’re racing full steam toward Christmas! It will be the first time that our little family will be just us for Christmas! We have never had that and even though it is unfamiliar, I am really looking forward to a laid-back, nowhere-to-go, nothing-much-to-do, keep-your-pajamas-on-all-day kind of a Christmas!

 

The other thing that’s been taking up my time and passion again, has been art journaling/painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have been doing two art courses (online) in the last few weeks. And I have loved, loved, loved them!
The first one was Tam Laporte’s (aka Willowing) Fabulous Faces class which is just plain awesome! Rarely have I enjoyed a course quite that much, I have to say!

 

 

The second one is a portrait class by Gabrielle DeCesaris on skillshare and it has helped me tremendously in the technical areas and I have had quite a few “AHA” moments in terms of proportions and realistic feature composition!

{In progress}

 

And I think I have left my “can’t do faces right” persona behind now and things are looking up - and a lot more like actual faces now! I still need a lot of practice, but this kind of practice is so much fun, so I’m looking forward to that!

And in that spirit I have also signed up for Lifebook 2014 and I am SO excited for it to start - I can hardly wait!

A whole year of artsy, messy, healing, journaling, learning and expanding goodness is waiting to be explored and I will be part of it! YAY!

 

 

So, yes, that’s the last 3 months or so in a nutshell!

What new things have you been tackling in your life?

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