Adventures with Butternut Squash

When the hubby came back from grocery shopping earlier in the week, he handed me a butternut squash and said, "this was on sale and I knew you could figure out how to use it!" Well, I think I have cooked butternut squash one time in my entire life.  We were going to make last night "leftover" night, because Dominic has music therapy from 7:15-7:45 p.m. every Wednesday and we don't get back home until about 8:00 p.m. Even though we had some great leftovers (ribs and spaghetti), I wanted to try out a new recipe in the slow cooker - pumpkin and black bean chili, which I have never made before. When I had proposed my recipe idea earlier in the week, my husband told me he WOULDN'T eat pumpkin and black bean chili, if I made it, so I figured he could eat the ribs or spaghetti! At the last minute, I decided to use the butternut squash instead of the pumpkin. Wow, it was quite an "adventure" figuring out how to peel and cube that kind of squash. Peeling the skin gave me an upper body workout.  Trying to cube it was a bit like carving a pumpkin. I learned one thing - -  we have very DULL knives here. Anyways, I finally cubed up four cups worth of butternut squash and then put a little of this and a little of that into the slow cooker and turned it on. When Dominic and I got home from his music therapy, the house smelled yummy and the hubby was anxious to try the chili. When he started eating it, he said, "it tastes a little like pumpkin!" Well, it sorta did :) If you are interested in making the chili, here is the recipe:

Ingredients

4 cups butternut squash, peeled and cubed, seeds removed
12 ounce package three pepper and onion blend, frozen
15 ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained
14.5 ounce can Mexican style stewed tomatoes, undrained
15 ounce can tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon chili powder

Put all ingredients into a 2 1/2 quart slow cooker in the order given. Stir well and put the lid on. Put on high for three hours or on low for six hours. Makes 4-6 servings. This recipe could easily be doubled or even tripled, if you have a bigger slow cooker! This chili is more on the milder side, so if you want it to have a little more "kick," feel free to put a few dashes of your favorite hot sauce in. We love Frank's RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce here!