Carmelized Butternut Squash

I deviated from the plan for meals published late last week. I got distracted and we had a pizza delivery kind of weekend.


Tonight I regrouped. I was on my own tonight, so I decided to just eat various vegetable dishes.

First, I finally took the 3 small butternut squash from the last two weeks of CSA deliveries and caramelized them.

The ingredients used were three small butternut squash, salt, pepper, 3 tbsp light brown sugar, 1/2 stick butter. (I jumped the gun and chopped one of the butternut squash before I remembered to take the picture.....oops!)

First, I peeled and chopped the butternut squash. Peeling a butternut squash is not the easiest project. I find that if you cut the ends off and stand the thing upright, you can peel them with a sharp knife pretty easily. My vegetable peeler does not get deep enough with these things. I chopped these into small pieces because they were very small squash to begin with. the chunks were about 1/2 inch cubes.

Then, I tossed the chunks with salt, pepper, brown sugar, and the butter, which I melted in the microwave. I spread the chunks out on a foil lined cookie sheet.

Then I baked them at 400 for 30 minutes, turning them twice with a spatula so they brown on each side.

They tasted very nice and the texture was great. I was a little surprised at the small quantity produced by 3 squash, but again, they were the smallest butternut squash I have seen. I also did not like that the butter ran into the corners of the pan and burned, causing lots of smoke in the oven. I think I used too much butter and would cut the amount by half next time.

I also made the beets and apples recipe from last week, but this time I added pears to the mix, cut out the butter, and used apple juice instead. It worked very well. 

Finally, I made a salad with CSA lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes.

The next CSA delivery comes tomorrow. Here is what I have left from last week:

lettuce
tomatoes
1 cucumber
swiss chard (previously thought to be collards)
small bag of okra

The lettuce, tomatoes and cucumber will be used in lunch/dinner salads, and should be gone by tomorrow.

I will saute the swiss chard and bake the okra tomorrow. That should finish off last week's delivery just in time to see what next week's delivery holds.