Toddler-Friendly Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese Bake

Mac and Cheese ya'll.  Mac and CHEESE.  If your kids are anything like my daughter, here's the general reaction to cheesy pasta noodles: Eyes wide, shrieking (good shrieking) and a happy food dance.  The problem with mac and cheese is two fold: it's addictive to kids and it's full of potentially processed chemical cheese.  Even the organic version isn't rip-roaring with nutritional powerhouses. You can do a lot to mac and cheese and still make it super kid and tot-friendly, delicious, and loaded with veggies.  I've done broccoli mac and cheese many times and even my husband, who hates broccoli, grudgingly admits that the combination works really well.  

Butternut squash mac and cheese, however, takes it to a whole new level for me.  I'm a huge fan of pureed butternut squash and love to add it to recipes in creative ways.  I am not, however, a huge fan of roasting and peeling a whole butternut squash.  Which is why I cheat and buy the pre-cut version from my grocery store.... and it is totally worth the extra money so I don't have to hack at the whole squash with a machete and look like a crazy person.  Pureed squash can add a sweeter flavor to the dish, so I really flavor up this meal with herbs, spices, and a couple of different cheeses.  You can make the sauce itself and just serve it over macaroni or you can bake it all together.  This recipe can easily be doubled.  Enjoy!

Ingredients:

1 lb pasta of your choice: elbow macaroni, rotini, penne

2 lbs of cut and peeled butternut squash

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 cup of minced white onion

5-6 sage leaves

Freshly grated Parmesan - around 1 cup

Shredded Cheddar cheese - around 1 cup 

Salt and Pepper

Olive oil

Directions:

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil.  Before it gets too hot, throw in your cubes of butternut squash.  I learned this the hard way....having a splish splash fun time with boiling water? Nope.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

It should take around 5-7 minutes for your squash to soften but that also depends on the size of the cubes,  Smaller cubes = faster softening.

While the squash is boiling, get out a deep skillet and heat up some olive oil on medium high heat. Saute your onion for 5-7 minutes until translucent and then add your garlic and saute another 1-2 minutes.  

Keep the flame on your onion and garlic on low heat while you puree your butternut squash.  Time- saving tip:  You can keep the same pot you used to boil your squash to boil the pasta.  At this time, get your pasta going according to package directions.  Once your squash is pureed into a smooth sauce, add it to your onion and garlic in the skillet and increase heat to medium.  Slice up your sage leaves as thin as possible and add to your sauce.  Season with salt and pepper, cover, and let is simmer on medium low heat for 10 minutes.  

After 10 minutes, add 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese to the sauce and mix it well.  Spray a casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.  Add your cooked pasta to the casserole dish and then pour in your sauce.  Add 1/2 cup of the Cheddar cheese and mix it all really well.  Top off the dish with the remaining 1/2 cup cheddar and 1/2 cup Parmesan.  Bake uncovered for around 15 minutes until the cheese has melted.  You can serve this with some grilled Italian Turkey sausage or just eat it as Meatless Monday dish.  Your toddler will love this and you will love that there are multiple servings of veggies in each portion!!

Toddler-Friendly Oven-Baked Veggie Falafel (Chickpea) Patties

I am a big fan of deep-fried, delicious falafel and any sort of Middle Eastern cuisine in general. However, deep-fried falafel is well...deep-fried.  Hence began my quest to create an oven-baked version of falafel that was also toddler-friendly and healthy.  You can stuff these patties into pita bread with some pickled onions and tahini or just serve them plain with a little garlic yogurt sauce.   You can also make a big batch and freeze them.  My toddler loves these and I hope you enjoy them too!

Oven-Baked Veggie Falafel (Chickpea) Patties

2 15 oz can of chickpeas - drained

1/2 large red onion
4 cloves garlic
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1/4 cup cilantro
1 cup of fresh spinach and kale mix
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 cup all-purpose flour 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Throw your chickpeas, onion, garlic, parsley, cilantro, spinach, kale, olive oil, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper in your food processor.  So basically, everything except for the baking powder and flour.  I should have probably just said that....

Pulse it well so it looks like bright green hummus:

Add the baking powder and the flour and pulse once more, leaving the mixture chunky.  Transfer the mixture into a bowl.  You can either refrigerate the mixture at this point for up to 3 days or you can make it right away.  

Form the mixture into patties and lay gently on a olive oil-sprayed, foil-lined sheet. Mine yielded 12 patties but I made them pretty large.  

Bake for 12 minutes and then flip (VERY carefully) and bake another 12-15 minutes.  The outside should be slightly crispy but not dry, while the inside should be soft.  These will not have the same texture as fried falafels, but the taste is still amazing and it's significantly healthier!

Did I mention these are LOADED with protein and fiber? So if you have a toddler that has been having trouble, um...."letting things out", so to speak, I can assure you that these patties will do the trick.  Nothing like poop talk to get you in the mood to cook, am I right??  

Toddler-Friendly Asian Style Ground Turkey

Ah, Asian food.  There are days when I all want to do is shove my face into a bowl of spicy, greasy, MSG-filled General Tso chicken and even greasier noodles.  Don't forget the three limp pieces of snap peas and broccoli they throw in there for some greens.  Let's face it: Certain Asian takeout is not exactly the healthiest, and as a parent, you may be a little more hesitant to let Junior try the Kung Pao chicken. Make all the jokes you want about the mystery meat they might use, but I would rather pass on takeout if I can, especially as a meal option for my little one.  BUT...this food is so amazingly delicious! Not that deep fried chicken doused in some sweet orangey-ish looking sauce that attempts to pass as authentic, but true Asian food!

All those spices and flavors! Garlic, ginger, scallions, sweet, savory, spicy! I wanted to create a "base" sauce that you could apply to pretty much any meat (or tofu if you prefer).  In this recipe, I used ground turkey because it's a super lean, healthy meat and relatively inexpensive compared to grass fed beef.  I served my ground turkey over a bed of brown rice topped with some sesame seeds and scallions.  You can add some broccoli to the turkey while it simmers and have a complete meal with veggies.  I served this with green beans on the side, but the combinations are endless; you could do noodles, lettuce wraps, spring rolls.  This takes less than 30 minutes to make (unless you're making brown rice with it) and only tastes better the next day!


Asian Style Ground Turkey

Servings: Approx. 8-10

Ingredients:

2 lbs lean (93%) ground turkey

1/2 cup soy sauce, low sodium if preferred

1 tablespoon brown sugar or coconut palm sugar

1 tablespoon sesame oil

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, or double if you and the family can handle spice

4 garlic cloves

2 inch piece of fresh ginger (seriously one of the weirdest looking herbs I've ever seen)

3/4 cup minced red or white onion

Optional:

Green onions/scallions

Sesame Seeds

Brown Rice

Directions:

Get your base sauce ready: Combine the soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, and 4 tbsp of water in a small bowl and mix well.  Set aside.

Heat a large, deep skillet on medium high heat.  While the skillet is heating up, peel the skin off your ginger, garlic, and onion.

Spray some non-stick spray on your skillet and add the turkey to the skillet and begin breaking it up and letting it cook.  While the turkey cooks, throw your ginger, garlic, and onion (or the Great Triumvirate of cooking ingredients, as I call it) into your chopper and give it a whirl.

Once the turkey has fully cooked, add your Great Triumvirate to the pan and cook for a couple of minutes. Add that magical sauce you put together in step one, (scrape the bottom for sugar) and mix well. Cover the skillet and let it simmer on medium low heat for around 15 minutes, then serve.

Usually, lean ground turkey turns out really dry but with the addition of the sauce in this recipe, it keeps it very moist and just soaks up the flavors amazingly well.  Ground beef would obviously be more flavorful, but can be fattier.  

Get out a bowl and add a cup (or two, who does one cup of rice??) and throw the turkey on top.  Add some sesame seeds and scallions and you are ready for some homemade Asian food goodness.  

Granted, serving this to a toddler who isn't able to use a spoon independently is a bit of a challenge. Especially one who has recently decided that being fed by her mother is the greatest affront to her toddlerhood and won't be tolerated for a minute.  This usually results in most of the food and five spoons on the floor, a VERY happy Border Collie, and a triumphant toddler who managed to get three pieces of turkey and two grains of rice in her mouth in 45 minutes.  

I hope you enjoy this recipe!!