Brought to you by the color orange: Butternut Squash Lasagna

Dinner. I like food.


I'm not sure how this happens but every once in a while it seems like everything in a certain meal or the main course of all the meals for a day end up being the same color. Today our menu was brought to you by the color orange and by the color yellow, green made a guest appearance as usual though. Breakfast: egg sandwiches; Lunch: carrot and daikon radish salad; Dinner: butternut squash lasagna; Snack: clementine. The only way it could have been more perfect would have been to have a golden delicious apple for another snack. Oh, but I am having popcorn as I type this for a late night snack! That has some yellow/orange in it. Cool.

Anyway, I checked out several recipes for butternut squash and other similar recipes and created my own. I've made it before and the recipe I'm writing down now is a based more on the last one I made and not this one as I had to change it based on what I had available and time constraints.

Ingredients:

Enough lasagna noodles for a 9x13 pan, cooked (I like whole wheat)

White pasta sauce (my favorite is my own creamy pesto sauce), 24oz or so.

1 medium butternut squash, seeded and sliced and lightly roasted

1 16oz container of ricotta cheese

16oz of mozzarella cheese, shredded

1 cup walnuts, chopped

fistful of fresh basil leaves

1 tsp oregano

1 tsp cinnamon

2 tablespoons brown sugar

salt and pepper to taste


Run squash through the food processor, mix squash and chopped nuts together with basil and oregano in large bowl. Set aside.

Mix ricotta cheese, cinnamon, brown sugar, salt and pepper in small bowl.

Starting with a thin layer of sauce, alternate layering the lasagna noodles, cheese mixture, squash mixture, and the shredded cheese topping it all with shredded cheese and extra nuts if desired.

Bake for 45 minutes, if possible, test the squash for tenderness.

Substitutes this time due to time and what I had on hand: Ritoni pasta (whole wheat) instead of lasagna. Jarred alfredo/three cheese pasta sauce (not as good, I think but time was short), dried basil instead of fresh, so sad. Please pardon the phone pics, I need new batteries for the better camera.