A delicious alternative to pancakes

Over the course of the past several years a series of circumstances -- menopause, piriformis syndrome and the COVID pandemic back-to-back -- resulted in my gaining nearly 50 pounds. This year I've been working on losing them and getting back into shape. This feels particularly important to me now, because as I enter my 60's I know that if I don't maintain now, an aging body will only get worse!

One very simple change has helped a lot: I stopped eating wheat. When you knock out wheat, you also knock out a lot of the sugar and fat that comes with it in sweet foods like cake, cookies and the like. The result? I immediately dropped about 10 pounds!

Breakfast can be a particularly tricky meal for skipping wheat-based foods -- pancakes, waffles and muffins can be so tempting! My usual breakfast has come to be an egg cup (recipe for that to come later) and a piece of fruit.

Yesterday I was out of fruit -- and egg cups, for that matter -- so I looked through my fridge for alternatives. Egg cup was replaced with a fried egg. And fruit -- well, I had some cooked acorn squash so I grabbed that.

I smooshed it out on the plate, topped it with a bit of butter and popped into the microwave to warm.

Meanwhile, I fried an egg.

When the squash was warm, I topped it with a bit of brown sugar (you could also use maple syrup, just like on pancakes).

Finally, since I like a fried egg on top of a stack of pancakes, I topped it with the fried egg.

It was delicious!  It had all the flavors of breakfast that I love, and the fiber and sweetness of a piece of fruit.

I'm not intolerant to gluten in any way -- celiac disease, allergic, for example -- but I have also noticed that my digestion seems to work better without the wheat. If you are sensitive to wheat products, this change in the breakfast menu will probably help.

You may be wondering how much of a hassle it is to cook the squash -- typically it takes up to an hour in the oven. But using the microwave, you can cook a whole squash in the time it takes to prepare pancakes. Here's how:

Wash the squash.

Score a line around it (any direction) with a knife or poke some holes in it. Put it on a plate whole and cook it in the microwave at full power for 5 minutes. 

Take it out of the microwave. It will be partially cooked but soft enough to cut along the scored line.  Cut it in half.

Open it up, put it back on the plate and return it to the microwave. Cook for an additional 3-10 minutes (depending on how large it is) until you can stick a fork easily into the flesh.

Scoop out the seeds. (Save them for roasting if you like toasted pumpkin seeds. Wash and dry them. They are already cooked so don't need a long time in the oven when you're ready to toast them.)

Scoop out the soft flesh and serve. If you have extra keep it in the fridge to use another day.

By the way, you can use this technique for spaghetti squash too.

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