A Great Way To Squash Their Prejudice

Wishing your family would eat more veggies? Here’s how to eat more vegetables when you don’t like them: Season them well and start subtly sneaking more of them into your daily meals. Small changes repeated over time can have a huge impact.

I talk a lot about hard squash because besides being nutritious, it lasts a long time in the refrigerator. Along with cabbage and root vegetables, it’s a superhero.

Let’s take one: butternut squash. What do you do with it? The simplest way to begin is to peel it, cut it up into bite sized pieces and roast it in the oven on a cookie sheet. You can season it up with some warming spices and serve it in a soup or as a side dish. One butternut squash offers a lot of flesh, so I can usually use it in a few meals if I desire. So often, I leave most of it plain when roasting (aside from salt and maybe some garlic powder) and sneak it into a main dish.

Brown Rice With Squash, Bacon and Onion

Here’s one example. We don’t eat bacon often and when we do, it’s generally a little at a time. Kept in the freezer, it’s easy to cut off an inch or two to put into a dish like this. I watched Ina Garten make risotto with butternut squash once and I enjoy that simple, comforting meal. We don’t always have arborio rice around the house, though, so I substitute it with a more nutrient dense and fiber rich brown rice. I always have that in my pantry. Below are the ingredients.

• chopped bacon
• onions
• cooked brown rice
• roasted butternut squash
• French thyme
• parmesan cheese

Brown the bacon in a pot and then add the onions and seasonings of your choice before adding rice and chicken stock or other liquid. Or if you have rice that has already been cooked, add it to the pot and heat through. Add cooked butternut squash and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Macaroni and Cheese: A Sneakier Idea

If you think your family will balk at the chunks of squash pictured above, then try another approach. Do they like macaroni and cheese? Guess what! If they are used to yellow cheddar, you can puree the squash and sneak it into your mac and cheese. No joke. It’s delicious.

While boiling half a box of macaroni, I started the sauce in a skillet. I didn’t even have any milk on hand, so after cooking some chopped onions in a little butter, I added some oat milk and thickened with a little flour. Seasoned with salt, cayenne and French thyme. Mixed in about 3 cups of pureed squash and then a couple ounces of grated cheddar. I put that into a greased casserole dish and topped with a couple ounces more of cheddar before baking.

Compared to the amount of squash, I really used very little cheese here. But it was delicious, and no one missed it. I might even think of pureeing some white beans to add to the mix for some fiber. Yes, that works great in cream sauces! (Just don’t tell anyone what’s in it until after they try it.) Experiment with the proportions and seasonings and let me know what you think.

Trying to please a meat eater? Please read Take Your Burger Further With This Surprise Ingredient for another sneaky and mouth-watering idea.