Squash the Picky Eater

Yeah, hi, I know. Shut up.

So it’s been awhile. I feel, though, like I really have to share this with you.

Our son barely eats. The only meats he will eat are bacon and an occasional chicken nugget or Potato Chip Chicken. That’s it. Forget vegetables. Forcing fruit into him is a nightmare. In fact, the only way I can get a nugget into him is to wait until he’s lying on the floor, place it on his chest, and run away.

But the boy liked him some pumpkin-oatmeal cookies last holiday season, so I kept making them. Then I tried muffins. Then with the garden ‘sploding I tried carrot-zucchini muffins. He likes. Very much.

I will sneak vegetables and iron into my child anyway I can.

Know what has a lot of iron? Butternut squash. Also oatmeal. Oats have iron. Fiber, too.

Hmmmmm…

So I went looking for recipes for butternut squash muffins. Most of the ones I saw called for dicing it and boiling it first. That sort of defeats the purpose of nutrition, right?

But pumpkin muffins. Those usually call for canned pumpkin. And I could bake a squash to get it to the right texture.

Booya.

I used this pumpkin muffin recipe as a nudge, but I tweaked it. A lot.

In the morning or the day before-

Get yourself a butternut squash. Preheat oven to 350, slice the squash in half (this is harder than it sounds), remove the seeds with an ice cream scoop (save those), oil the skin with olive oil, and bake it until the flesh is fork tender. Remove from oven and allow it to cool, then strip the skin from the squash, put each half in its own zipper bag, and squish the shit out of it.

Keep squishing.

It’s fun.

Put them in the fridge to cool more. Go do stuff.

Oatmeal-Butternut Squash Muffins

 

24 paper muffin cups

1 cup bread flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp allspice

 

3 eggs

2/3 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 packed cups butternut squash

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 cup white sugar

Preheat oven to 350. Place paper cups into muffin tins. Combine dry ingredients in large bowl and stir with fork until combined. Set aside. In large, heavy bowl whisk eggs. Add oil, and whisk until combined, then add vanilla and whisk some more. Add butternut squash and use a fork to beat the mixture until well-combined. Add brown sugar, beat with fork, add white sugar, beat with fork. Take a rest.

Slowly add flour mixture into wet ingredients, beating with a fork until everything firms up a bit, and it’s all well-combined. You can use a mixer for all of this, but for muffins you really get better results with a fork and elbow grease. When you’re satisfied, pour or spoon batter into muffin cups. You should be able to get 24 filled just right. Into the oven, and bake for 20-25 minutes- whenever a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

You can leave out the oats and replace them with another cup of whole wheat flour, you can substitute applesauce for the vegetable oil, but please to use the paper cups. They make for moister muffins. I also like bread flour for muffins over all-purpose flour. Not as rustic, but they come out lighter.

They received high praise from everyone in the house. Hopefully the sweet potato muffins on the schedule for Wednesday will do the same.