Butternut Squash Enchiladas

A long while ago, my beloved friend and yoga teacher, Bridgett, gave me a recipe for Butternut Squash Enchiladas.  Today, I finally took them out of my "to do" file, and made them.  Oh. My. Yum. 

I did a few things differently.  Some for convenience, and some because I'm just a little bit crazy.

First, I didn't roast the squash - I microwaved it.  By the time I got around to making dinner, I didn't have 45 minutes to roast the squash before I made the sauce, assembled it and baked it for 30 minutes.  I did, however, have 10 minutes while the sauce cooked to nuke 'em.  I'm a big fan of cooking squash this way.  I cut them in half (or in butternut's case, I cut the straight part away from the round bottom, cut it in half lengthwise, and then hollow out the round bottom with an ice cream scoop), put them cut side down on a plate and microwave them for 6 - 12 minutes, depending on the size.  Then I add 2 - 4 minutes if they're not done through.

That was the convenience part.  The slightly crazy part was that I made three versions of the sauce.  The first two were this recipe halved, the third involved another, very small squash I nuked after tasting the enchilada sauce and thinking my kids might not like it.

Version One: like it says in the recipe. I used 1/2 a chipotle for this half of the recipe.

Version Two: without the chipotle and ancho sauce. I'm not a big fan of "smokey" so this half was my safety net.

Version Three: Just squash, cream cheese, cumin and nutmeg.  I assembled the enchiladas, reserving about 1/4 of the filling, which I  then thinned with some low sodium V8 to use as the sauce, in lieu of the canned enchilada sauce.  This was the kid version.

I served it with some Texmati with Red Rice and Beans and steamed artichokes.  My kids discovered the glory of the artichoke recently, and I am very, very pleased.

This was a lovely, filling meal.  I'm so happy when I find good vegetarian meals that are so satisfying.  Thank you, Bridgett.  Namaste.