Life of Wry

In the category of timesavers and simplifiers, Jim and I had a very good holiday food thing going this year.

It started sometime in November when I made a very nice side dish to go with a pork tenderloin. It was seasonal and easy, more or less healthy and had great presentation appeal. And it went perfectly with pork.

It was this apple and butternut squash dish I found on the web or maybe it passed through my Facebook feed as a Tasty recipe. Wherever it came from, it was a winner.

Here’s what it looks like in its pre-baked form:

Stating the obvious, those are alternating slices of granny smith apples and butternut squash. They are laid in a buttered dish and topped with a mix of brown sugar, flour, cinnamon (cloves, allspice, whatever you like), and then drizzled with melted butter.

I’ve also combined the butter and sugar mixture and created more of a crumble for sprinkling on top, but it doesn’t really matter–it melts and blends no matter its original form. I’ve ALSO added some maple syrup, which is awesome if you can handle that much sweetness.

It bakes for about an hour at about 350. It can be made ahead and reheated.

You can see it has great utility.

Good as it is, Jim and I are totally sick of it, having made it for a couple of our own fall dinners as well as Christmas Eve, and having brought it to our hikers’ holiday potluck, Christmas Day at the Albany Frames, and last night’s dinner at Nory and Kimball’s.

But if you think you might be making a lot of them and bringing them to a lot of dinners, you can cut up a whole bunch of butternut squash, even the apple if you keep it wet with lemon, and premix a bunch of the topping, so all you have to do is assemble and bake.

It’s kinda like that other salad–the broccoli, cranberry, almond one–I made too many times to count a couple holiday seasons running because it’s also easy and a great healthy side dish for Christmastime because it’s all red and green.  I mean perfect, right?

I know. Slow news day. But anything that’s this much a part of our holiday season deserves a mention.