I love squash! First you should cut the thing in half lengthwise.......yes it is hard but can be done. Then put the halfed sides down in a pan with some water. Put in oven at 350 until you can take fork and easily pierce skin, usually about a half hour or so, depending on size.

Doing this allows you to scoop out the squash, at least this is the way I have always done it. In the meantime you can sautee onion in a pan with a little butter, when squash is cool enough to handle, sccop out good stuff and put in pan with onion, add salt and pepper to taste........then add some brown sugar, just enough to sweeten some.........heat and serve! Simple but good.

I am sure others here will have better recipes but this is one I have used and loved before.

Lacquer it and use it for a doorstop, if "it wasn't too bad". Life's too short for food you place in that category.

It isn't all about me Suzy,I think my husband would like it if I can find a good recipe. I'm not adverse to trying new things either..not that set in my ways.

I'm in both Linda's camp and Suzy's. If you like it, roasting is best. I don't even add water or oil. LF loves it this way. But, I don't like it all and won't bother eating it.

I sometimes halve it lengthwise, peel the club end and cut into 1/2 inch thick slices. Layer the slices shingle wise, alternately with slices of sweet potato and apple in a buttered baking dish. When the dish is full, chop a small sweet onion and sprinkle over the top, add a couple more pats of butter a light sprinkle of salt, lots of fresh ground pepper, cover with foil and bake at 375 for 20 to 25 minutes, remove foil and bake another 10 to 15 minutes.
Good served with pork.
Or cut in half, remove the seeds, put a pat of butter in each cavity and a generous spoonful of brown sugar, spread some of the botter oln the "club" end a little salt and bake (or microwave) until soft.
Linda C

Makes great soup. Cut into chunks. Soften an onion in a little oil, add the squash, then add chicken stock and let it cook until the squash is soft enough to mash, or put into the food processor. Season with 1/4 cup of lime juice (balances out the sweetness and gives it some 'kick'), cayenne, a half finely chopped hot pepper, salt and pepper.

Aside from soup - I'm not a fan :) (I'm told it makes good ravioli filling, because you don't need cheese, but I think it would be incredibly bland)

Thanks for the suggestions. My mother was a good cook but vegetables were't her forte and the squash I had growing up was tasteless. If I can find some recipes that have more flavor,then I can add this squash to things I'm already growing or at best buy locally when they are in season,something I'm more conscious of than ever before. I think the couple times I had it in the not too far past, it was baked with something sweet so it may have been the brown sugar.Maybe I'll try that.

The thing about squash is that it can be easily camouflaged. I find that is the most successful way to get people who hate squash to the level where they can actually swallow them. Butternut squash makes a very, very good pie. Use it as you would pumpkin. In fact they're pretty much in the same family, commercial pie pumpkin is really a squash. I made a black walnut-cinnamon, raisin squash bread last week. Two loaves. It disappeared in two days and my dh is not a 'squash lover' either. On the other extreme are the squashes one would eat raw, and they make a very palatable vegetable in stews or soups. And this is the type I used in my squash bread. Notice I didn't say zucchini, as yellow squash works just as well.

Baked butternut squash like both of our Lindas discussed is pleasant..... and when eaten like this often replaces the carb portion of a meal such as a potato. I don't go out and buy them, nor raise them, but eat them when served by someone and usually enjoy it.

It was supposed to be tongue in cheek when I suggested you use it as a doorstop, because when you said the 'beet' word, you plunked my twangers, and a doorstop is about as close as a beet will get to my kitchen. Not that I haven't tried to eat them, either. I think that some tastes or aversions are either hard-wired in or very engrained. You must really hate squash however, if you are just now getting brave enough to buy one because you think your dh might like it. rofl. I promise you it won't be as traumatic as the beef heart I made dh #1 (mentally discecting all the major arteries as I cut it up), or the chicken livers and green tomatoes I fried up for #2.

However, all that being said (and I'm a squash eater), I have eaten some really awful stuff with squash in it. Had I not known squash can be good, I'd have hung them up forever based on that experience.

lindac's recipe is good

or if you like a pumpkin pie-like flavor:

Whack in half lengthwise; place cut side down on microwave-safe dish, HI until tender (depends on the size, but 10 to 20 minutes), that is, a fork pokes easily. Remove and place face up on oven-safe tray (I use Pyrex so only one dish is used). Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon butter, 1 tablespoon brown sugar that is mixed with ¼ teaspoon ground dry ginger and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. Broil until bubbly, about 5 minutes. I cut very large acorns into quarters and then sprinkle each quarter with the sugar/butter mix.

BTW, one makes squash pie with the same recipe as pumpkin pie, just microwave the squash until very tender and then puree.

Try the beets fixed harvard-style (a sweet-sour sauce that has orange juice and spices). The OJ takes away the 'earthy' taste.

I will for sure try that, Meldy and thank you. It is indeed the earthy taste I find offensive, even though I love the smell! It's like I am eating dirt. That being said, I will eat borsch if it is made well. Our old friend, from Poland, used to make it on special occasions and I found it good.

Marda, this recipe will turn you from a "not bad" kind of squash eater into a "hey, that was good" kind of squash eater.

If it doesn't take Suzy's advice and turn the next Butternut Squash you see into a doorstop.

This came from Epicurious.com. I happen to love anything that involves goat cheese.

3 1/2 pounds butternut squash (about 2 medium), peeled, seeded, cut into 3/4- to 1-inch cubes (8 cups)

2 tablespoons olive oil
Coarse kosher salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter, divided
3 cups sliced leeks (white and pale green parts only)
1 1/ teaspoons chopped fresh sage
1 5.5-ounce log soft fresh goat cheese
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup hazelnuts, toasted, husked, coarsely chopped
preparation

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place butternut squash cubes and olive oil in large bowl; sprinkle with coarse kosher salt and ground pepper and toss to coat. Spread out squash cubes on large rimmed baking sheet. Roast until just tender and beginning to brown, stirring occasionally, about 35 minutes.

Meanwhile, melt 3 tablespoons butter in heavy medium skillet over medium-low heat. Add sliced leeks and chopped sage; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté until tender but not brown, about 15 minutes. Coat 11x7-inch baking dish with remaining 1 tablespoon butter. Spread half of leek mixture over bottom of prepared baking dish. Sprinkle with half of squash and half of cheese. Repeat layering with leeks, squash, and cheese. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.

Preheat oven to 375°F. Pour cream evenly over gratin. Sprinkle with toasted chopped hazelnuts. Bake uncovered until gratin is heated through and cream is bubbling, about 30 minutes (40 minutes if previously chilled).

I'm withya on the beets Suzy!!! Shoot, doorstop would be too good for it.

I like butternut squash as soup as well, with either fresh ginger or chipotle (or any other smoked) peppers added in. I generally saute an onion and some garlic, add in peeled chunks of the squash, add stock and a broken-up dried chipotle pepper or three (and maybe a sweet potato if there's one I need to get rid of), simmer until tender, spice up with salt, cayenne and whatever, then blend smooth with a stick blender. Toast the seeds in the oven (this may very well be the best part!) and sprinkle on top.

The goat cheese and hazelnut thing sounds quite nice!

I do a variation of Linda C's halved thing with acorn squash--sometimes with the addition of a little (real) maple syrup--that's a hard-core winter dish for me though.

Marda, Neil is in your corner and he would add a few more things to the "I don't like" list such as (aspergrass)as he calls it and of course eggplant.

I love it all.
Katrina and I will eat squash and fried green tomatoes til
the cows come home and never get tired of them.
I fry the little yellow squash and then just before I take them out of the pan, I sprinkle sugar on them and turn them one last time.
Fried green tomatoes are fried one layer at a time, drained on a paper towel and when all are fried I layer them back in the skillet, sprinkling sugar over each layer and re-heat and serve.

Butternut's are baked in the oven with butter and brown sugar.

I don't do beets. I think they are esthetically unpleasing & just don't taste good. Squash I came to later in life & now really like. Ditto for eggplant.

I hate beets, have tried them made lots of ways but never, ever aquired a taste for them. I think I would rather eat plain dirt than beets!

First off, every once in a while I eat beets and then wonder why I don't eat them more often. I really like them, which makes me odd woman out around here, right?

As for squash, I don't have a "recipe." I poke them with a fork, nuke them for a couple of minutes to soften them a bit, cut them in half and scoop out the seeds, then bake them cut side down until soft. I just butter them like I would a baked potato and chow down. I could make a meal of a butternut squash.

Pidge, so that you don't feel lonely, I like beets too, especially roasted.
Squash I used to make with a little bit of brown sugar, can't anymore, so I just half the larger ones and bake and the little ones get sliced and roasted with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and sometimes a bit of garlic.
I like all vegies, well I can do without rugabata but will eat it if somebody serves it.

I also like beets...pickled, fixed Harvard style, or just boiled "slipped" and buttered....and I really love baby beets cooked with their greens and afew drops of vinegar and a drop of hot sauce.
Linda C

Never liked beets until I tried roasting them. And have you tried the golden kind? They look orange and have a wonderful flavour - much better than the red ones. The smaller the beet, the better the flavour too.

I made beet salad this week, with chopped, roasted red beets, mixed with cubes of feta cheese, dressed with balsamic vinegar. The cheese turns pink - it's pretty as well as tasty. I never would have thought I'D be eating it!

How do you roast them? Honestly never knew there was a golden kind 'cause I never like 'em!

Hi Marda and all. I like all winter squash, butternut and acorn are faves. The hint about nuking them for a few before cutting in half is a good once since they can be a bit hard to cut. I like them with the butter and brown sugar too. Sometimes I use maple syrup. I'm surprised no one mentioned adding a little orange juice. All hard squash like oj. Smiles. Sometimes I also throw in a few raisins and often a few walnuts or pecans. On occasion I've used a splash of Grand Marnier, instead of the oj, since I always seem to have a couple bottles of it around. People seem to think it's a great gift for a chef. It is.... heh.. but, it goes a long way.

Beets. I'll [we'll] never forget the first time I made beets for Christy. She had said she liked them. I cooked them and served with butter. She was horrified. The only way she'd ever had them was pickled. lol.. She wanted to know what the hell I had done to her beets. 28 yrs later we still laugh about it. She still only likes cold beets and I only like em hot. Linda, to roast them just scrub and roast until they're soft when poked. Depends on size and other variables. It's nice to quarter them to get a couple of surfaces browned. Just toss with some olive or other oil and bit of kosher/sea salt, then roast spread out. You can take that last side of skin off after they roast, or the whole skin if you leave them whole. Have you ever seen the striped ones? They're pretty too.

Nothing to add but wanted to wave a big HI to Coconut..
Oh i could add my twist on the dish...i use orange marmalade instead of brown sugar.

well hi coconut! I sure wish you would check in more often,it's really great "seeing" you again. your cooking expertise always impresses me and has from day one..which was a long long tme ago. Marnier and squash,who would have thunk it? Hope all is well with you and yours and thanks for popping in. Now stay here.

Waves to Pam. Hi there Pam. Long time.

Hiya Marda. Things are fine here, thanks. Hope all is good by ya'll. Yes, been a longgg time since started coming here. I'll try to do better. I do miss ya'll when I don't come around. Smiles. I noticed last year when I stopped by that Aileen wasn't around. Did something happen to her? I hate to ask, but we are all getting older and....wondered.

She's still checks in from time to time and you can find her posting on other forums too. She and V are doing great . She changed her name to Agnespuffin which is why you probably haven't seen her posts.

A hint for those who need it.

Sugar twin makes a brown sugared flavored artificial sweetner... Could not find it in the store here, so we ordered a case of it on line.

We use it on sweet potatoes and acorn squash, baked in the microwave, or for squash, lidded, seeds removed, cooked separately in their skins...

Also the spray "I Can't Believe Its Not Butter" is a good thing.

Last summer the cooking group I belong to was hosted by an man in Staten Island whose main hobby is cooking the food of his Italian heritage. We all gathered around and made pasta from scratch, and some of the pasta dough had butternut squash in it. This was filled with a butternut squash and cheese filling, and once the ravioli were boiled, they were finished simply by tossing them in a pan in which butter, fresh sage, and garlic had been cooked together for a few seconds. It was amazingly good.

The recipe below is the closest I've found to it.

If you don't like beets, you need to try a good Ukrainian borscht. Beets are at their best in this dish, where they are included in their roasted form and also as a pickled liquid called kvass. To roast beets, wrap them tightly in foil, and put in a 450F oven for one hour. Allow to cool, and slip off skins.

Here is a link that might be useful: BUTTERNUT-SQUASH-SAGE-AND-GOAT-CHEESE-RAVIOLI-WITH-HAZELNUT-BROWN-BUTTER-SAUCE

OMG thank you for the above recipe....this is one of my favorite dishes and our local Biaggis quit serving it several years ago.

Sheila that recipe sounds like heaven!

I love beets - pickled, roasted, hot, cold, doesn't matter. Beets, toasted hazelnuts, some blue or goat cheese and a bit of olive oil-balsamic vinaigrette. MMMMmmm!!!

Regarding a recipe for the squash - I don't like most squash, but have discovered that most of it is really good if not cooked to mush. I had a really excellent curry the other day with 1" cubes of butternut squash and I think chicken. (Mom brought home leftovers.) It was really good. The squash gave it a nice bit of sweetness, and the curry was a mild one, so that all the flavor could come through. (I don't like them so hot that you can't taste anything.)

Well, Hi there Coconut. I heard you had posted and I had to come see for myself and wish you well. We are both just rocking along, being retired, bored and usually busy.

Give my regards to Christie.
Aileen

Hi Aileen!. So great to hear from you. Smiles. I was checking some of your agnesspuffin posts and was going to email. Tried to answer earlier today, but our electric kept going out this afternoon with storms. So much lightning. Am very glad to hear you and V are doing well. Bored? Tsk, tsk... Christy was really happy I heard from you too. We both send ya'll our best.

Coke and Christy

Wow - way from the GP past! Coconut! I think I might still have been Bedale when you were last here.

How grand to see you back, I hope it's for more than this thread.

Hi Sheila, I do remember you as Sheila. Smiles. Very good to "see" you. I hope it's more too. Didn't you have a daughter you were close to? How is she doing? Memory may or may not be serving me on this. ..heh, but I have some fuzzy memory of picket fence?? Was that to do with you?

lindajewell - sorry, didn't see your question about beets until just now! Roasting beets is simple: trim the leaves off, leaving about an inch of stems. Wash the beets, and make a foil 'package' around them, wrapping the foil so that no juice can leak out. Put the package on a cookie sheet, and cook at around 400F for, um, well, until they're cooked : small ones can be done in 45 mins, big ones in an hour,- once I forgot and cooked them for 2 hours, and they were fine.

Remove and let them cool a bit. Cut the top and bottom off, and scrape the skin away (it should almost fall off). The orange ones are great sliced, with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar dripped on them. I'd always hated beets until I tried it this way.

Thank you! I have printed this out and will give it a try. Will let ya know 'cause I really do dislike them! LOL!

Lindajewell ~ when you buy the beets, buy the smallest! One of the things no one thinks to mention, but very important. While some beets have been bred to be more or less un-stringy when the size of a baseball, in real life, any beet bigger than a golfball is growing tough cells to support the size.

And few grocers ever label produce by name... You might see Yukon Gold potatoes, but Shepody? or Sweet Million tomatoes, but Celebrity? and I don't think I've ever seen beets, or turnips, or cabbage named. So we can't buy by specific variety, thus we have to get the tenderness by buying small and young.

OK, I haven't chimed in on this thread at all, but I need to share this with you guys:

I love beets. Roasted, pickled, sauteed, in borscht... it doesn't much matter, I think they're tasty. I was out weeding in my garden yesterday and I noticed a beet. Only one. And it was big enough to pick. I didn't remember planting beets, but I planted a micro-green mix last spring, so I decided it probably had beets for the greens and one just grew up.

Steve is out of town, so I decided to roast the beet with a few carrots and call it dinner. Scrubbing the beet, I noticed it was a little odd. The greens, which I intended to saute with some garlic and olive oil, were also a little odd. When I cut into the beet, I was struck by a familiar smell, and {{gwi:171085}}...

... sigh... and a nasty, woody one at that!

Now I have to go to the village farmer's market tomorrow to buy some stupid beets to satisfy the craving! Thank goodness I didn't saute the greens!

Good thread, new things to eat that won't add weight and taste good. I like em and the greens boiled, steamed or cooked in oil.

Do any of you like pickled eggs?
They were boiled eggs peeled and soaked in pickled beet juice. I love beets by the way, My mother planted some of everything in her garden and if she planted it we ate it.

My mom always made pickled green beans and also pickled peaches. I hope y'all are satisfied, I'm hungry!!!

Jaz ~ lol. Actually, some folks LIKE sauteed radish. And radish seedpods are considered a delicacy when stirfried or chopped into salads. I have no personal experience with either method... it's possibly unfortunate, but I consider radishes good only for planting around the squash to deter borers.

Jan ~ I never developed a taste for pickled eggs. Mum always had a jar in the fridge filled with pickled eggs and beets. Of course, the eggs turned pink from the beet juice, and to me they just *looked* yucky. By association, I didn't like the beets from that jar either.

Last night DH made a middle-eastern dinner with tabbouli with tomatoes & parsley, and sauteed zucchini & eggplant with diced tomatoes & shallots. Nice & light for an awfully hot day.

Radish, both greens and roots, boiled until tender with ham or streak-o-lean (southern thing FYI) just as you would do with turnip greens. Nice! We had a bumper crop one year. I just couldn't stand to toss all those lovely green tops, so I cooked them. It was a very nice suprise. I can't imagine BUYING enough to make a mess of greens. I guess you need to grow your own.

I know this is the gardening forum but if you want to try Harvard Beets before trying the "fresh from the garden" variety, here is a simple method to make. Buy pickled beets
(I get the ones in a jar), make a rue with butter & flour,do not overbrown the flour, add the pickled beet juice and stir until thickened and then add the beets and heat. The pickled beets are already sweetened but you might taste and add more if you want and salt & pepper to taste.

pris ~ try it by gently warming ¼ cup orange juice, then stir in 1½ tablespoons cornstarch dissolved in some of the pickle juice. Add the remaining pickle juice plus ¼ teaspoon ground cloves. Up heat to medium-high and stir constantly until the liquid has thickened and bubbled for 2 minutes. Stir in the beets. This has a little more flavor than using a roux, and there's no chance of a floury aftertaste.