Homemade Butternut Squash

The first two foods I attempted to make for Aidyn were sweet potatoes and butternut squash.

Even though I started with the squash, I had some issues getting it to cook, so I posted about the sweet potatoes first. I finished up the squash yesterday morning. Since I only had 4 ice cube trays, which were all full of sweet potatoes, I had to wait for those to completely freeze so that I can dump them into my labeled freezer bag. After emptying the trays and rinsing them out, I filled them back up with the squash.

Cooking squash:
I followed the instructions given to me by Jeannie. I cut the squash in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, placed them "meat" down into a casserole dish, poured about 1/2 an inch of water in the pan, and placed in the microwave for 7.5 minutes. I think this may have been where I "messed up". The directions said to make sure the skin was soft before turning over. Part of the skin was soft, but not entirely, and I turned it squash over anyways.

Now, with the skin side down, I cooked the squash for 5 additional minutes. When I went to scoop out the "meat" of the squash, only the bottom, round portion would scoop out. The rest of the squash was not tender and fully cooked. To help the squash finish cooking, I cut it into 1.5 inch slices, put it back into the casserole dish (without water), and placed in the oven on 400' degrees for about 30 extra minutes.


After the extra cooking, the squash was tender and ready. Just like the potatoes, I scooped it into the blender, added water until it reached the right consistency, and then poured into the ice cube trays. The butternut squash did not yeild as much as the 3 sweet potatoes.

Instead of getting around 60 1oz servings, I ended up with 25 1oz servings. Even still, if you consider a Gerber package of $2.oo = $0.50 per serving and then my $2 squash = $0.08 per serving. It may not be $0.03 like the potatoes, but it's MUCH better than $0.50.

Aidyn's next food will be carrots. Now, that's a vegetable I actually eat!

*Side Note...I told Ben that we're going to have to start eating these other veggies ourselves. :( I do not want Aidyn to be a picky eater, like us, and so we're going to have to move beyond potatoes, corn, yellow squash, green beans, peas, and carrots.