Karianne Salisbury: Do I really have an entire post about butternut squash?

Last week I finally found butternut squash at a price I wanted to pay. It was only 69 cents a pound at Maceys, when I've only seen it around 1.30 a pound for a while. I purchased a very small one several months ago and experimented with some of the Hungry Girl recipes and have been wanting to try more ever since.

I've mentioned the Hungry Girl recipe books before, but I absolutely love them. I have both of the current two cookbooks and love searching through them when I'm suddenly in the mood to cook. As one review describes:

"Packed with sneaky tricks like using light bread for sandwiches, replacing potatoes with butternut squash, baking with pureed pumpkin rather than oil or eggs, "The Hungry Girl" is fun and healthy!"

I go through phases where I cook a lot and then even longer phases where I don't cook at all. Having still been recovering from my move, lots of family visits, and just getting a regular schedule down (which I still don't really have—sad huh?), I haven't made much time. So I was excited last night when I got home and actually had some time to prepare something and wasn't already half starved. :P

PLUS, both of my roommates are gone this weekend. For some reason, I have this weird thing where I can't cook when others are in the kitchen and worry about making too big of a mess, so the timing worked out perfectly. I set up my laptop in the kitchen, selected a movie, and proceeded to watch while I cooked. It was great fun.

I pulled out my squash and looked for a knife to start the process: to cut off the two ends and cut the entire thing in half. Guess what, there's no knife. Uh, all I have are my little steak knifes. Not exactly gonna cut it—literally. Hehe, I didn't even plan that!

Quick Facts about Butternut Squash
* It's an easy way to get payloads of vitamins A and C and fiber.
* Squash is an America original, first cultivated in Central America
* Low in fat, butternut squash provides significant amounts of potassium, important for bone health, and vitamin B6, essential for the immune system.
* Can easily replace regular and sweet potatoes for a very similar-tasting recipe that is a lot healthier.

I then see that we have one of the knife blocks sitting on the counter. Yes, I've been saved!! Except I quickly find that the cheapest knifes offered at IKEA are not exactly great. In fact, they barely cut and are extremely flexible, and not in a good way. I'm not willing to go out and find/buy myself another option so I keep working and hope something will work eventually.

Even though I don't cook much, I'm learning how important it is to have the proper tools.

It was a good thing I had a movie on because I'm pretty sure it took my about a half hour to finally cut the squash in half. Not exactly effective use of time, but hey, I'm cool with that. But, that was only the first step. I still had to peel the thing and then slice and cut it up. At this point, I didn't even know what I wanted to make with it. :)

The peeling went a lot smoother this time around than it had last time. It helps a lot to put the squash in the microwave for about 30 seconds. I only tackled half of the entire squash—it took me long enough! But I cut a bunch of fry-like chunks, some thin cracker-like pieces, and finished off cubing a bunch.

It was a lot!! And that was just half of the entire thing!!

I ended up making the Bake-tastic Fries last night and browned some like hashbrowns this afternoon. Seriously, they taste pretty much exactly like potatoes like this. It's insane.

I've done some research and found that you can freeze raw squash in the freezer for about 4 months. So that's awesome. I'll have a ton available on hand to use for so many of Hungry Girl's recipes. I actually want to eat squash more regularly so this will definitely help me out. In fact, I just might have to go get another one while they are still cheap. :P Here are some pics of some other recipes I look forward to try. I think the cheesy butternut bake will be next. If you want the instructions either buy the Hungry Girl book (look up which one has the recipes you want: Book 1 or Book 2) or ask me and I'd be happy to share!!