Acorn Squash with Brown Sugar and Bacon

This autumn day is probably one of the final weekend days of the year where it was in the 60s, perfect in my mind for a final grilling. Today Tom and I decided to combine seasonal foods with summer-style cooking. First up was this incredible recipe I found here for acorn squash. I love acorn squash. I need to find more recipes using it. I guess I never really thought about it before, but I really do love fall produce.

Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here's the recipe. I wish I could have gotten a better picture; acorn squash is such an interesting vegetable to look at. But I forgot my camera. This is why I'm getting a little digital camera for Christmas, right? (hint hint)

I apologize for the quality of this photo, this is from a camera phone.

1 acorn squash

2 slices of bacon

1 1/2 tbsp butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

salt and pepper to taste

makes 2 servings

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with tin foil. Halve the acorn squash and scoop out the seeds. (You can salt and cook the seeds along with your squash, that's what we did!) Poke holes in the inside so that the flavor can soak in as much as possible. Melt some of the butter and paint the skin side with it. Add the rest of the butter to the scooped out part of the squash. Place the halves on the baking sheet, and add 1/4 cup of brown sugar and top with a slice of bacon on each side. Bake for 40 minutes. We then threw it on the grill to get the bacon crispy, but you can obviously skip this step. Just cook it until the yellow part is relatively soft. 

If you're health conscious you can always skip the bacon. Then you'd just have a sweet side. This also makes a great appetizer. Or, if you make a whole squash for yourself you can have it as a meal. 

My only problem with this recipe was how to eat it. I wish that recipe instructions also gave eating instructions sometimes. I wasn't sure if I should just chop it up and eat the bacon last, scoop out the inside, or what. I ended up just scooping out the yellow part and forgetting about the skin (though you can definitely eat that too!) and then eating the bacon by itself. The bacon had a nice sweet flavor to it, and the squash was very 

yummy! I totally suggest considering this if you are trying to plan Thanksgiving sides. 

Sautéed Butternut Squash

Rather than writing the essay I should be, I'm going to share with everyone my creation of the weekend. Butternut squash is in season, which means it's nice and cheap (79 cents a lb for local grown!) and also best-quality. 

I originally began searching for butternut squash soup recipes, but all of them were encouraging use of a blender which I do not have. Instead I used some of the ingredients from a recipe I could barely recall and couldn't find and basically just created my own recipe. This is what I did:

1/2 large butternut squash

1/3 cup diced carrots (I used baby carrots, yum!)

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/8 cup butter

dash of cinnamon 

oil

Heat a large skillet over medium heat and melt the butter. Add the squash, carrots and onion to the pan. Add oil as necessary. Stir occasionally. Add brown sugar and cinnamon (I used more than a dash and regret that mistake). Simmer in covered skillet on medium-low heat until the squash is soft (about 20 minutes). 

Great on a chilly fall day!