Baked squash

Welcome back to LHCO! Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday weekend, filled with friends, family, and good food. (Hey! Those sound familiar! ...maybe it's because they're Laura Ingalls Wilder's favorite things to write about in the "Little House" books.) 

Happy Monday, and welcome back to real life after the holiday weekend. First order of business for today's post is the countdown to Christmas. 

29 Days Until Christmas! 

Today, I'm continuing my Holiday Recipe Bonanza with a fall staple: baked squash. 

It's hard to imagine something simpler and more delicious to prepare in the kitchen. To make baked squash, find a hard-skinned winter squash, like the acorn squash pictured above, chop it in half with a big kitchen knife, and scoop out the seeds. Place the halves in a baking dish with about half an inch of water, add butter, brown sugar, maple syrup, and spices to your taste, and bake at 400° for about an hour, or until the squash is very soft. Enjoy the fall flavor while the squash is still hot... yum! 

Here's a quote from Little House in the Big Woods chapter twelve "The Wonderful Machine" about Ma preparing squash:
"At other times they had baked Hubbard squash for dinner. The rind was so hard that Ma had to take Pa's ax to cut the squash into pieces. When the pieces were baked in the oven, Laura loved to spread the soft insides with butter and then scoop the yellow flesh from the rind and eat it."

Another way to prepare squash or pumpkin, taken straight from that same chapter, is to halve the squash, scoop out the seeds, slice it, pare off the rind, and cut into cubes. Slowly boil the pumpkin with water for several hours, until the liquid is gone. Read the full story in Little House in the Big Woods for slightly more specific instructions and a great anecdote about table manners.

You can make a pumpkin pie from scratch using either baked or stewed pumpkin. Ma Ingalls used stewed pumpkin, but I've done just fine with baked, puréed pumpkin. Pumpkin pie from scratch is DELICIOUS.

Whew! This has been a long post. The worthy subject of squash and pumpkin deserves thorough treatment, though, no? Or maybe I should just stop talking and eat up my squash. Yum.

Come back soon for more fall and winter recipes on LHCO!
Elizabeth
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