Squash winter with one last gourd meal

It?s amazing to me how many fruits and veggies are available year-round, but I have to admit that I crave anything ?in season.?

Garden-grown tomatoes are so much better than ones grown in a hot house, and eating good, winter squash always puts me in a good mood.

I did some research to see just how much longer the latter will be around, and according to the website ?Eat the Seasons,? butternut squash is still in season through mid-March, so there?s only a limited amount of time for you to make this week?s recipe before you have to store it away in your recipe box and wait until next year.

With the waning winter months in mind, I decided to roast up one more squash before Mother Nature brings us into springtime. After perusing the produce section, I landed on butternut squash as my gourd of choice.

I read through lots of recipes for how to prepare butternut squash. You can make everything from soup to pasta sauce (and at some point, I undoubtedly will), but the more I searched, the more I kept coming back to a very simple treatment for it that I just had to try.

This recipe comes from the website ?Complete Recipes.? You can find it at http://completerecipes.com/Simple-Roasted-Butternut-Squash.html. I added a lot more garlic than the original recipe.

*?*?*

Simple Roasted

Butternut Squash

Ingredients

1 butternut squash

2 tablespoons oil

4-5 cloves garlic, minced

salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Peel the butternut squash, scoop out the seeds and cut into one-inch cubes.

In a 9×13-inch baking dish, add the squash, oil, garlic and salt and pepper, and stir to coat the squash.

Roast for 25-30 minutes, stirring halfway through, until the squash is fork tender.

*?* *

This was absolutely simple to do, just as the recipe promised, and it was a great side dish for some great steaks we had for dinner.

I am definitely not sad to see winter go, but if only one thing makes me pine for this time of year, it?s those great winter veggies we get to enjoy.

Of course, I?m also ready for garden-fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, so bring on the spring! I?ll be content to wait another year until squash is on my plate again.

Lindsey Young is managing editor of The Clarion, the Kansas Publishing Ventures newspaper in Andale. She can be reached at lindseyclarion@gmail.com.

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