American Entree
BAKED GARLIC SQUASH
INGREDIENTS
1 big butternut squash
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh parsley
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM
1/2 teaspoon herbes de Provence
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut off skin of squash. Remove pulpy bottom of squash and discard. (Put in recycling bin if your community recycles squash pulp.) Cut remaining squash into one-inch cubes. Melt butter. Mince garlic cloves.
Mix butter, olive oil, parsley, garlic, salt, vegetable spice, herbes de Provence, and Parmesan cheese in 2-quart baking dish. Add squash cubes. Stir and turn cubes until they are well coated with the mix.
Bake dish at 425 degrees for about 50 minutes or until squash is tender.
TIDBITS
1) Don’t waste this tasty dish on kids who might look at it and say, “Ew, squash. I don’t like squash. I won’t eat it.” Good. More for you.
2) The USDA said that a 3/4 bushel of small, Georgian yellow crookneck squash costs from $8.00 to $10.35.
3) Some raw squashes can make men jealous. They’re probably the ones that cost $10.35.
4) Squash is a fruit and was never reclassified by the Reagan administration to become a vegetable.
5) George Washington enjoyed growing butternut squash. It is doubtful that our Revolutionary War against England would have been won without him.
5) The Confederate soldiers in the Army of the Tennessee were called “butternuts” because used dye from the butternut walnut to color their uniforms. The South lost the Civil War.
6) The popularity of the butternut walnut declined forever in the post-war South.
7) Well, it could have happened.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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