Squash Galore!

Since my last post, I have introduced two more foods to my diet along with pears. The pears seemed not cause my body any problems; the pear sauce was pretty delicious as well.

Thursday was acorn squash day, and yesterday was butternut squash day.

For the acorn squash, I stuck to the recipe I had used before from the BTVC book. When we experimented with this recipe at the beach, we fell in love with it. The acorn squash comes out something like a sweet potato, which is something I absolutely love but is illegal for this diet plan.

In order to cook the acorn squash, I first had to cut it in half which is a chore in itself. Even with the biggest, sharpest knife we have it takes so much effort to cut this squash in half. But, once you do that its easy as pie from there. You just scoop out all of the seeds, put both halves on a baking sheet cut side down, and then bake them in the oven at 400 degrees until you can poke a dull knife through the squash. This could take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour depending on how big your squash is. Once they are nice a tender, take them out and flip them over on the baking sheet so they look like little squash bowls. Spread butter around the squash and in the middle, then add honey. I usually spread the butter around the edge some and then put the majority into the bowl part of the squash. Then I will fill the middle with honey and drizzle some around the edge. Once you do this, put the baking sheet back into the oven for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees. They will be so sweet, delicious, and tender when they are finished. At the beach we added some garlic salt, and that was tasty. But since I cannot have garlic salt I have just been adding regular salt, and once I added some cinnamon.

Acorn Squash and Salmon

This acorn squash is super tasty; everyone should try this recipe out!

As for the butternut squash, I had never had this type of squash before and had no idea how to go about preparing it. So, I looked up a recipe online and came across one for a french fry type butternut squash. I figured it would be a good idea to know a substitute for french fries since I cannot have potatoes. I went by the recipe and peeled then cut up the butternut squash into somewhat of fry shapes. And I thought the acorn squash was hard to cut in half, ha. This squash was so hard to cut into fries. Once I had it cut up though, I salted them and then spread them out on a paper towel to let the excess moisture escape. They sat probably about 20 minutes, the recipe calls for 30 minutes or longer. I then patted them with a paper towel to get all the moisture off of them and added them to a bowl to toss them in a little bit of olive oil. On a baking sheet lined with waxed paper, I spread the "fries" out and then baked them at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Then I flipped them and baked them another 10 or so minutes. Mine never got brown and crisp like the recipe says, so I'm sure something I did caused that, but they were still quite tasty. I salted and peppered them after I took them out of the oven.

Butternut Squash Fries and Deer Burger Pattie

You almost forget its squash and not potato!

I also made some more pear sauce and yogurt this week. They say third times the charm, well this time I think I finally made my yogurt right! I looks better than the last batch at least, have not had a chance to taste it yet.

Next food to introduce is spinach!