Healthy Homemade Side Dishes: Butternut Squash Casserole and Homemade Applesauce

Sigh… This past weekend was a culinary delight. (Isn’t every day in the Bowman cabin?)

I started off Saturday picking up my Angel Food order.  What a joy.  They sell some really neat products for a relatively good price, but the real joy is their allergen-free box, which includes gluten-free breaded chicken wings, chicken nuggets, chicken cutlets, and breaded steak. Adam loves their food. I would agree that they’re pretty good–tasty for sure–and quite the blessing to my man who doesn’t get any of the fastfood style breaded meats.

From there, I headed over to the Day house, where I was able to spend the whole morning and most of the afternoon with some dear, dear friends/family.  We played Settlers of Catan, ate apple crisp and moose stew (amazing!!), and made homemade applesauce!!  How fun!!

The process for applesauce in the Day household is pretty stinkin’ amazing.  We soaked the apples for a few minutes to help rinse them off, quartered them, and cooked them ’til soft.  Yes, I did just say quarter them.  We left the skin on and the cores in!  Then, we pushed them through this pressure-squeezer and it came out in applesauce!!  Super-cool!!!

Saturday evening a ton of us (ok…just 10 of us..) were eating dinner with our neighbor friend Chad.  Mom asked me to make some squash dish, since I have such an abundance of it. I wasn’t sure what to make, since I’ve only really tried my hand at squash desserts or had it pureéd with butter, salt, and pepper (Call me silly, but I’m about to drool…). So, I looked up some recipes (and yes, only looked at the ones with pictures), and with a few modifications, I made a squash casserole so good that everyone who tried it loved it, and even Adam had it at two different meals!!!! (GASP! is right! That doesn’t happen!)

So, here’s the wonderful recipe! 🙂

Sweet Butternut Squash Casserole

(Taken and modified from Allrecipes.com)

1 butternut squash, cooked and pureéd
2/3 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch salt
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (I used Pamela’s pancake mix)
3 eggs
1/4 cup margarine, melted

TOPPING
Approx. 1 c. Gluten-free Rice Chex, smashed up
1/2 cup margarine, melted
1 cup brown sugar

Combine all the ingredients and pour into 9×13 ungreased dish. Cook at 425° for 45 minutes.  Then, top with Rice Chex/sugar mixture and cook until the top browns and bubbles a little.  Serve warm.  Yum!!!

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Here are a few other pictures from other meals this past weekend:

Respond and let me know if you want recipes!