Bake-tastic Butternut Squash Fries

Per Serving (½ of recipe): 0 Points+
125 calories, <0.5g fat, 158mg sodium, 33g carbs, 3g fiber, 6g sugars, 3g protein

The recipe: "Hungry Girl Recipes and Survival Strategies...", pages 100 - 101
or http://www.hungry-girl.com/newsletters/raw/1398

I FINALLY used the rest of my butternut squash that has been sitting in my fridge from when I made HG's Dreamy Butternut Chicken Foil Pack a while back.  I've been curious about this recipe for a very long time, but have never tried butternut squash up until now.  I really didn't think this would be a truly good substitution for fries.  After all, it IS squash and not any form of potato.

I had a pretty difficult time cutting the butternut squash up.  I even microwaved it for two minutes to soften it up a little, as the cookbook suggests.  It is just a very hard squash, which makes it a challenge to cut up into cubes, fry shapes, whatever.  I powered through, though, and cut mine up into fairly thin french fry shapes.  I would recommend making yours larger than what I did.  They do shrink just a tad when cooked, and they stuck a little bit to the foil I was cooking them on.  You are supposed to flip these halfway through cooking, but mine were already sticking by that point.  I ended up losing parts of my small "fries" because they were stuck to the foil. 

So, my two suggestions for this recipe are to make your fries bigger than skinny fast food-size fries, and to use plenty of non-stick spray on the pan or foil you are cooking them on.  Once cooked, these came out delicious.  They reminded me a lot of sweet potato fries.  These had a slightly sweet taste to them, and almost tasted caramelized.  Everyone in my family liked these, and the best part was they were eating squash!  The texture was surprisingly similar to french fries as well.  I had a few of mine with ketchup, but they were actually just fine on their own with no dip.

Next time I am craving french fries, I will definitely be making these.  Even though they taste more like sweet potato fries, they should still satisfy my cravings.  I think butternut squash is my new friend!  First the Dreamy Butternut Chicken dish, and now these "french fries".  Who knew?