thejillsprats

This recipe was one we’d been looking forward to trying since my mother brought all of that squash by… It’s from The I Love Trader Joe’s Cookbook by Cherie Mercer Twohy. This book is great, they’re wonderful about keeping track of what recipes are vegetarian or gluten-free, or BOTH! It’s amazingly flavorful, and it wasn’t all that hard to put together. Actually, I prepped the squash while Elyse was out getting the other ingredients at the time. Sometimes, it takes two.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Pecans, Dried Cherries, and Blue Cheese

1 Butternut squash, cubed

1 sliced onion (red is best, but white works)

Pinch of sage (dried, use a small bunch if it’s fresh)

Olive oil

1/2 cup of chopped pecans

1/4 cup dried cherries

1/4 cup (about half a container) of crumbled bleu cheese

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400. Put the squash and the sliced onion on a baking sheet in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil to coat, then season with sage, salt, and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes. Scatter the pecans on top, then roast another five minutes. Take the pan out of the oven, and transfer to a bowl. Toss with the cherries and bleu cheese.

We promise, it tastes better than it looks. Honestly, it looks delicious anyway!

This is definitely one of the more colorful and eye-pleasing dishes we’ve made. The bleu cheese just melted into the squash and coated everything… It was to die for. As far as we’re concerned, this dish is the reason why Butternut squash exists. If you think this is good, you should try it the next day as leftovers. By your second sitting of this meal, the cherries will have plumped up a bit and they absorb that tang that comes from the bleu cheese quite nicely. Needless to say, this recipe is a keeper in this household. Noah won’t get a single bite! Speaking of which… we’ll probably never make this for company either. We have a hard enough time dealing with the fact that we have to share this with each other. Adding more mouths to feed is not an option.

And so it continues… Acorn squash: Devoured. Only five more squash types to go… Thankfully, these things have a decent shelf life.

Spaghetti squash earns its name from its strands that resemble spaghetti pasta. You can “shred” the squash with a fork to create these strands, cover them in a sauce that one would put on pasta, and voila! Your children have been fooled into eating a vegetable! This method still remains one of the top ways to prepare Spaghetti squash. Here’s our version…

Simple Spaghetti Squash

1 half of a Spaghetti Squash

 1 cup of your favorite spaghetti sauce (it’s okay to use store bought)

Salt and pepper to taste

1 cup of shredded Gruyère cheese

Place the squash half in a microwave-save pan with some water in the bottom of the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 15 minutes. Remove from microwave, and let cool under the plastic wrap for five minutes. In the meantime, pre-heat your broiler on LOW. Scrape the squash with a fork, and transfer the strands to another bowl. Save the squash hull. Combine the squash, sauce, and added seasonings, then transfer the mixture back into the squash hull. Top with the shredded cheese, and broil until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

I’ve personally never been one to enjoy pasta (gluten-free or not) with just a tomato sauce. I prefer my pastas creamy. That being said, for marinara sauce lovers, this squash was perfect! We used the Gruyère because it’s what we had. Parmesan would have been a lot better. I’m not saying it was bad because of the sauce. It was very good, but I thought that it could be better, and Elyse agreed. We knew what to try next…

Spinach Pesto Spaghetti Squash

1 half of a Spaghetti Squash

1 container (about 1 1/2 cups) of your favorite pesto sauce (we used Butoni, it has lots of cream factor to it)

1 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese

1 box (3 ounces) of frozen spinach

1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder

1 cup of shredded Gruyère cheese

Prepare the squash as in the previous recipe. Thaw the spinach, and squeeze out any excess moisture. Mix the squash strands with the Parmesan, pesto, garlic powder, and spinach. Divide the mixture between about five ramekins. Top with the Gruyère and broil on LOW until the cheese melts. If you make the ramekins ahead of time, do NOT top with the Gruyère right away. Microwave the individual servings for about 1:30 first, then top with the cheese, then broil.

Now THIS was that cream factor we were looking for. In my pasta sauce hierarchy, Alfredo is at the top, followed by vodka cream sauce, then pesto, then marinara. This almost made me change my mind. The ramekins make for easy serving, and for keeping for longer periods of time. Elyse and I both preferred this recipe to the first one. Try them out, and see what you think!

For a college student, getting a care package from home is an event. Companies have started popping up that allow parents to personalize packages for specific holidays, like a Halloween package. Just getting a simple box in the mail that required a decent amount of struggling to get back to my dorm room was a pleasure in itself, because I knew that glorious box was full of one special thing… Gluten-Free Goodies. Now that I no longer live in a dorm… things have changed, including the form of care packages.

My mother came to visit for a weekend to see the current play at the college theatre that my roommate and I had parts in (kind of, I was a technician). She brought us a care package. Kind of. She brought a carful of food with her, with everything from fancy cheese, to gluten-free snack cookies, to instant rice noodle bowls, to fresh fruit and veggies. By veggies, I mean squash, squash, carrots, squash, potatoes, squash, and sweet potatoes. The woman brought down Acorn, Spaghetti, Butternut, Mexican Grey, Zucchini, and Crookneck squash. SIX KINDS OF SQUASH. MULTIPLE SQUASHES OF EACH VARIETY. What in the heck are we supposed to do with this much squash? I mean, Zucchini would go in zucchini fritters (somewhat of a late night after rehearsal snack), the Mexican Grey and the Crookneck could go into Elyse-approved (vegetarian) tamales… I don’t think our kitchen is equipped well enough for Butternut Squash soup…

Oy vey. It’s a good thing Elyse and I both like squash…

Call time (when the actors and technicians need to be at the theatre) was fast approaching, and we needed dinner. Preferably with squash. Obviously. Time to start cooking…

Apple-Cinnamon Acorn Squash

1 Acorn Squash, halved

If anyone wants to send us bigger kitchen knives... Please and Thank You.

2 Apples (we had Gala, but use what you want), shredded

1 stick of butter or margarine

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375. Prepare the squash by removing the seeds, and place it cut sides up in a pan with an inch of water in it. Mix the apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Set aside. Cut the butter into small cubes. Place about half of the cubes in the wells of the squash halves. Stuff the wells with the apple mixture, and put the remaining butter cubes on top, all over the visible part of the squash as well. Place in the oven, and bake for an hour.

Sweet, but still appropriate for dinner.

Elyse had already headed off to the theatre by the time these were done. I took them both to the theatre, ate one in the green room, and took one to Elyse’s dressing room. From what I heard, the other girls were quite jealous. The squash was perfectly cooked, and the apples added to the sweetness of the whole dish. It wasn’t overpoweringly sweet, which was a good thing. This would be great with an added handful of Crasins… We’ll have to try that next time!