Monday, November 8, 2010 at 07:01 AM
We’ve all heard of oven-baked sweet potato fries, right? But butternut squash fries? Yes, I made these up in my very own kitchen and I highly, highly recommend them! Not only are they scrumptious in taste, but they will make your whole house smell wonderful!
I’ll be honest – these Butternut Squash Fries were not planned!
My daughter and I were having a Girls’ Only Dinner – reheated homemade turkey meatballs with Dreamfields spaghetti – while the “boys” were out at a Cub Scout meeting. We were having such a lovely time – talking about dance class, Kindergarten, lots of girl stuff – when I went to get something in the refrigerator and I noticed that I had one of those peeled, cored and seeded butternut squashes in the refrigerator – and it was about to go bad. Oh horrors! In fact, it was going bad – on just one edge – but something had to be done – and quick!!! Good thing my daughter loves to cook, so we could weave Save the Squash into our little Girls’ Night!
So first, I checked to make sure the squash was safe. It had a small mold spot on one edge. I went to the US Food Safety and Inspection website to check and I found that as long as I cut a 1-inch piece around the mold spot, I was all set. By the way, this US Food Safety and Inspection website is awesome!!! It tells you – right there on this Molds on Foods Page – everything you need to know about your food safety questions. It is now one of my favorites.
Moldy spot gone and knife cleaned, I decided that I just didn’t feel like boiling and mashing this squash. I wanted to get back to Girl Talk! My daughter was showing me all her new dance moves from her ballet, tap and modern classes. I wanted to get this squash cooking – and quickly. Then I remembered something that my friend Miss Conduct once said: All vegetables taste good when roasted at a high temperature with a little olive oil and Kosher salt. So true!
So, I sliced the squash quite thin and then cut it in half.
Together with my 5-year-old daughter, we laid it out on parchment paper…
and sprayed it with olive oil (NuVal score of 11) using my Pampered Chef Kitchen Spritzer) and sprinkled it with Kosher salt and ground black pepper.
Then we put it in the oven at 435 degrees for 25 minutes.
Then, we took them out and flipped them and put them back in for another 15 minutes.
When they came out of the oven – just as my husband and my son were walking through the door from Cub Scouts – they were just perfect. Crisp on the outside, warm and mealy on the inside. The perfect “fry” We liked them plain – the kids liked them dipped in ketchup. Yum – we have a new fall treat. And I’ve found a new way to get a new vegetable into my kids!
Butternut Squash, by the way, gets a NuVal score of 100, so I’m going to file this recipe under Incredible Vegetables. Enjoy!
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Cooking with Kids, Incredible Vegetables
Tags: Butternut Squash, Cooking with Kids, food safety, fries, Incredible Vegetables, mold
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 10:05 AM
Welcome to Marvelous Meals with Rachel, a regular feature here on A Better Bag of Groceries. Rachel Rodek, MS, RD, LDN is Manager of Nutrition Communications at NuVal. Rachel and I are headed out to NY this weekend to represent NuVal at Price Chopper’s Healthy U Open House. We are looking forward to a fun and busy trip. In the meantime, Rachel and her fiance, Fernando, got in the kitchen this week and collaborated on this wonderful recipe. I love how it brings their families and backgrounds together – much like their wedding will this June! So without further ado, I bring you Rachel!
Have you ever started out on a path where you thought you knew the end point, but by the time you arrived you were in a completely different spot?
Well, that was this past dinner. You see, I’ve had this butternut squash sitting on my counter for the last month, not knowing what to do with it. So I started looking up recipes and came across a beef stroganoff with butternut squash. What an interesting twist to a family favorite. My mom used to make this dish all the time (minus the squash, of course) – and we enjoyed every bite. But then again, everything my mom made (makes!) is simply wonderful.
What I loved best about my mom’s cooking, other than its utter deliciousness, was how it brought everyone to the table. Family meals were a fundamental part of my childhood – helping to create the eater and nutrition-lover I am today. Did you know that lifelong nutrition habits are formed by the time a child is around four years old? That’s why it’s so important to role-model good eating habits and continue to introduce new foods – even to a picky eater. For someone who used to hate it if my pork chop touched my lima beans (intermingling of foods was never allowed in my tiny world – I’m not even sure I ate those lima beans even if they didn’t touch), I now have adventurous taste buds and an appetite to experiment. Thanks Mom!
But back to this past dinner. I realized upon searching my cupboard and fridge that not only did I not have mushrooms (a staple for beef stroganoff), I also didn’t have sour cream. And where did those noodles disappear to? Hmmm. Time for experimentation!
Instead of mushrooms I used water chestnuts, adding a nice crunch; and instead of sour cream I added spaghetti sauce. Then we had it all over polenta (my fiancé’s specialty!). As Tina from NuVal’s TradingUpDownTown would say: Holy Yum! It’s basically a hearty spaghetti sauce with the boost of veggies over mushed up spaghetti.
Serves 4-6
Ingredients:
1 pound lean ground turkey (I used 99% lean, however we only have a score for 93% lean [33], but skinless turkey breast scores a 48)
1 yellow onion, diced (NuVal Score 93)
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed (Score 100)
1 jar Classico Tomato Basil (Score 43) Or your favorite high-scoring spaghetti sauce
1 (8oz) can sliced water chestnuts (Score 83)
½ cup Quaker Enriched Corn Meal (Score 89!)
2 cups water
2 tsp olive oil (Score 11)
2 tsp canola oil (Score 24)
1 tsp paprika
½ tsp garlic powder
Salt & pepper to taste
Directions:
Saute chopped onion in 2 tsp olive oil until translucent. Add ground turkey and cook through. Add butternut squash cubes, water chestnuts, spaghetti sauce, paprika, salt and pepper, and cook until squash is tender, about 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a medium-sized pot, bring 2 cups water to a boil with salt, pepper, garlic, and 2 tsp canola oil. Add corn meal and whisk on high until thick.
Pour polenta (corn meal) into the bottom of 4 bowls, and spread to cover the bottom. Let cool until firm, but not cold.
Top with Butternut squash mixture.
Enjoy!
Nuts About Nuts Winner
Congratulations to Commenter #39, Stacie! You have won yesterday’s giveaway. A care package of almonds, walnuts and a NuVal t-shirt is coming your way. Just email me at abetterbagofgroceries@gmail.com with your mailing address and t-shirt size.
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Marvelous Meals
Tags: Butternut Squash
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 06:45 AM
If there is one thing I’ve learned at NuVal is that vegetables are Rock Stars. They get incredible scores – almost all of them fall somewhere between 91 and 100 on the NuVal scale (100 is best). Most processed foods don’t even come close. Take bread, for example. The median score (half of the scores fall above and half fall below) for bread is a 25. The median for milk is a 52. Crackers? The median score is a 14. So, yes, vegetables rule the food kingdom. And fruit is awesome too. It’s like Michael Pollan says: Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.
I have always been a big veggie fan. A die-hard fan. Like if I come back from a trip where vegetables were scarce, I need to have a big green salad or a bowl of asparagus. For more on my veggie-loving background, see About Me. So it is with this new knowledge of how amazing vegetables really are coupled with my innate love for all things green that inspired me to start a new feature on my new blog: Incredible Vegetables. Each week, expect to hear about a new vegetable, how it scores, and how you can prepare it.
So, let’s get going! Here’s my first Incredible Vegetable Post!
Butternut Squash
The bummer about being a veggie lover is that you have to find time to prepare them. This is not always easy. I have a hutch in my kitchen where my non-refrigerated produce sits just waiting for my attention. Right next to Finn, our Betta Fish, my trusty Ipod player, and a bottle of red wine. The pineapple, canteloupe, and tomatoes on the vine hang out there until I have time to hunt down my chef’s knife and a cutting board. And that’s where my butternut squash hung out – for a while.
The beauty about late fall/winter vegetables is that they have some staying power. This particular butternut squash I bought from Beth at Flint Farm in Mansfield, MA. It just seemed like one of those autumnal things you have to do. But somehow, by the time I finished with work, dinner, homework, bathtime, story time, and bedtime, the bottle of red wine was a little more inviting than my peeler and that butternut squash. Finally, after weeks on the hutch, the guilt got to me, and I did it. I went to Allrecipes.com, plugged in Butternut Squash, and voila – I found an enticing recipe for which I had most of the ingredients in house.
Squash-Apple Bake
Ingredients:
1 medium buttercup or butternut squash, peeled, cut into 3/4 inch slices
2 apples, peeled, cored and cut into wedges
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground mace (this I did not have in house, so I used nutmeg instead)
Directions:
Arrage squash in a 12-in. X 8 in. baking pan. Top with apple wedges. Combine remaining ingredients; spoon over apples. Bake at 350 degrees F for 50-60 minutes or until tender.
It was delicious. My husband and I both loved it. My kids, not so much. They suffered through their mandatory two bites. All the more for Mommy!
I took it for lunch for the rest of the week, throwing in some walnuts for protein and satiety.
How does it score?
Butternut Squash gets a 100 on the NuVal score. Rock Star!
Apples score a 96 - not too shabby!
The Walnuts I threw in to make it lunch-worthy scored an 82. Worth the calories & fat.
But the Land O’Lakes stick butter scores a 2. Well, what did you expect? :- )
I definitely plan to make this recipe again and if I’m feeling lazy, I can always buy the pre-peeled, pre-sliced butternut squash in the produce section.
The Breakfast Trade-Up Bag GiveAway
Thanks to everyone who commented on my first Tuesday Trade-Up post. I was blown away by all your stories! It’s great to see that people are learning about NuVal and using it to make nutritious choices. Congratulations to Laura from Backstage Pass to Health and Happiness. You’ve won!
Question of the Day
What’s your favorite autumn or winter vegetable?
Posted by: Melissa
Posted in: Uncategorized
Tags: Butternut Squash, Incredible Vegetables, Uncategorized
