As a kid did you ever locked in a contest of wills with your parents over eating a certain food?

Mine was squash.

I can remember the tomato red table cloth, the walnut paneled room and my mother sitting there in her robe (the chocolate brown one – and yes I was up well past my bedtime) waiting for me to finish ever bite of the butternut squash she’d fixed for dinner.

Let’s just say she didn’t win the day.

And ever since that evening (I was eight I think) all squashes and squash based dishes have been pure evil…That is until I put a couple decades between me and my younger self.

And bought an immersion blender.

Said culinary implement opened the way for squashed based soups and sauces as I literally blend away the dreaded stringiness I am still not a fan of. (Yeah, spaghetti squash gives me the heebie-jeebies.) In any case, in trying to overcome this learned response – I attempted this recipe – as I could fool the little kid still residing in my psyche that I was eating more apples and crumble than dreaded butternut squash.

It mostly worked.

(Though they weren’t fooled.)

It was pretty tasty.

(Though in fairness I halved the recipe and then split the dish with my husband so in reality I only ate a bite or two – which is still substantially more than I ate what back when I was eight. A win is a win.)

Agatha Christie: Now if this dish was executed with excellent knife skills and artfully arranged in a baking dish I can see either Miss Marple or Tuppence serving this at a dinner party or at a well attended family gathering – as the end result is very pretty!

Though the clean up is still a chore.