Winter Squash

One great and easy thing to feed babies & toddlers is squash. I prefer to cook butternut squash, acorn squash and pumpkin in the crock pot. split, seed and chop into small enough pieces to into into your crock pot flesh side down. Add about half an inch of water, cover and set on high. In 3.5 hours you'll have cooked squash. Cool and scoop out of the skins. Blended with some of the cooking water it makes great puree or with a fork or potato masher to have more texture for an older baby\toddlers. I prefer mine mashed with butter and brown sugar but real maple syrup is awesome and pumpkin is great for bread and pie of course.


I did however notice in the summer the acorn squash I made for my daughter was bitter. So I came up with an idea as I didn't want the squash to go to waste.

Flesh of one acorn squash, pureed about 4 cups
2 cups of unsweetened apple sauce
dash of cinnamon
1 tablespoon white sugar

I mixed it all in the blended it all in my regular blender. I would guess other sweeteners would work too or not using one at all.

My daughter loves acorn squash apple sauce - I'm so glad I did it.

Another great way to use it is in bread [banana squash bread] or muffins. My son hopefully will never know his chocolate chip muffins for school have a serving of veggies in them.

Apple-Pear-Squash & Blueberry bread

8oz of pear-squash puree
1.5 cups of apple sauce
1\4 cup oil
1\2 cup brown sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
dash of cinnamon
1\4 teaspoon salt
2\3 cup fresh whole blueberries

Mix dry. Mix wet. Combine. Fold berries in at the end. I washed them and patted them dry.

As for baking I would expect it would bake in an oven like a typical banana bread. I however have never baked this in my oven. I bake it in the crock pot.

Pour battered into a greased dish smaller than the vessel of the crock pot. Turn a heat safe bowl over inside the crock pot.I just use a small cereal bowl. Make sure it's not too high as the lid of the crock pot has to fit on top with the bread in the dish inside. Add half an inch of water. Place dish inside the crock pot on the over turned bowl. Put lid on crock pot. Cook on high. It won't look like it's doing anything but you will see about an hour inside the batter swell and 2.5 hours in or so you will begin to smell cooking bread. 3.5-4 hours later your bread will be done. Use a knife when it comes out clean it's done.

Warm with butter it was even an awesome Momma breakfast.

Pancakes

I found a recipe for vegan pancakes for the kids. While my son can have lactose free milk my daughter cannot have any dairy or eggs.I am trying to have more and more recipes everyone in the family can eat. Sometimes looking for vegan recipes can be frustrating as people simply replace dairy with soy or some other food which is also an allergen. Or these recipes are long and involve complicated things I can't find in a typical grocery store. Although this is easier as no one in our family is gluten or corn free.

I found this recipe from allrecipes.com:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 tablespoon oil - plus extra to fry with if you need\want to.
  

It works well. They turn out nice and fluffy and even passed as 'normal' pancakes for my husband. However plain pancakes [my son does not do sauce - like maple syrup] can get boring so I tweaked the recipe.

Vanilla maple vegan pancakes

3\4 cup Whole Wheat flour
1\2 cup all purpose flour
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups vanilla rice milk
1 tablespoon real maple syrup
1 tablespoon oil

Oil to fry with - I use coconut oil shortening while safflower oil in the batter.

I have made this recipe with cow's milk, water, rice milk without issue. I have also used canola, safflower or coconut oil without noticing a difference. So it seems an easy recipe to modify for allergies and switching things up. Mix and cook like typical pancakes - mix dry, then wet, mix together and cook in frying pan or griddle and I use a little oil or coconut shortening - helps to keep from sticking and with browning.

I am going to try adding blueberries and other fruit some time soon - we'll see how that turns out.