Recipe: Acorn Squash Mashed Potatoes

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I bought some well-overdue acorn squash recently (i.e. they were orange instead of dark green), so I wanted to find a new recipe to use them in a different way than just eating them on their own. I also had a lot of mini potatoes (I bought some, then my husband bought some, so we were overloaded). When I found this recipe for acorn squash mashed potatoes from the Tidy Mom blog, I thought it sounded pretty easy and thought I'd give it a try.

Ingredients

• 1 acorn squash, halved and seeded
• 5 yukon gold potatoes peeled and quartered
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon dill weed
• salt and ground black pepper to your taste
• 1/2 cup milk

Instructions

1. Heat oven to 400° F. Place the halved acorn squash cut-side down on a baking sheet lined with foil.
2. Roast squash in oven 25-30 minutes or until soft and tender. Remove squash from oven and scoop out the flesh.
3. Place potatoes in a large pot and with cold heavily salted water and bring to boil over high heat. Once boiling cook the potatoes 15-20 minutes until completely tender. Drain potatoes completely and return to pot over low heat for a few minutes stirring occasionally to dry out the potatoes slightly.
4. Place potatoes and squash flesh in a large bowl and mash with hand masher or a hand mixer on medium speed. Using a large spatula mix the potatoes and squash with the butter, mustard and dill weed until smooth. Add milk gradually, mashing to desired consistency. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If the mix is too thick and you’d like it smoother, add more milk a couple tablespoons at a time until you get the texture you prefer.

I cooked the acorn squash in the microwave instead of the oven, just because that's so much faster (all you have to do is poke holes in it for the steam to release and microwave for ten minutes!). But otherwise I pretty much stuck to the original directions (and I could use dill from my own dill plant, which I thought was so neat). I did forget the salt and pepper, so that was my bad; they were a little bland. But I loved the texture, and I thought the mustard (I actually used honey mustard) was an interesting touch. This was very easy to make, and I would totally make them again!