Winter Rice Salad lunch

Ingredients
Rice
Chickpeas
Chard
Butternut squash
chipotle powder
olive oil

Tahini Sauce
2 parts tahini
2 parts soy sauce
1 part black vinegar
1 part rice vinegar
0.5 part hot sauce
1 partish water

Method
Preheat oven to 400F.

Cut butternut squash is half lengthwise. Clean out seeds and place cut side down in a baking dish with high sides. Fill the bottom of the dish with water to cover about 1/2 inch of the squash. Bake for about 30 minutes until the flesh is soft.

Drain and rinse chickpeas, saving brine for Aquafaba experiments, if desired. On a baking sheet covered in parchment paper lay out chickpeas and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and chipotle chili powder or any other spices desired. Bake for 15 - 20 minutes until chickpeas are firm. They crisp up more as they cool down.

Cook rice in rice cooker. Can you cook rice any other way? I argue that there is only one way to cook rice and that is with a rice cooker.

Chop up chard into bite size pieces.

Whisk everything together for the tahini sauce adding more water if needed to get tahini to blend nicely.

In a bowl place rice, a couple of spoonfuls of butternut squash, chickpeas, chard and drizzle with sauce. Mix until blended together.

Notes
This was super tasty and a great way to use up the butternut squash that has been sitting on my counter for the past 3 months. The tahini sauce was adapted from the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook.

This is what it looks like before mixing everything up. The squash sort of disappears in the dish.

The salad was served with carrots, apple, and hummus.