What to do with Butternut Squash- take 1

I planted a couple of butternut squash plants in the backyard this year. As the summer has generally been on the wet side, plantlife has been flourishing, the squash plants being no exception. They are marvels of botanical engineering. Long shoots travel what seems like multiple feet in a day. upwind from the plants, on a small hill above them, is a plot of tomatoes. The squash fought their way uphill, and I have been fighting tooth and nail to keep them out of the tomatoes all summer. Prodigious, in foliage as well as fruit, yielding four very satisfying squash with several more near maturity.

Well, what do you do with butternut squash, especially when you are oven-challenged? In terms of flavor, a butternut is both savory and sweet. I've always marveled that, along with the pumpkin, carrot and sweet potato, there are four beta-kerotene rich vegetables that seem equally suited for both ends of the sweet-savory spectrum. This time, we've made soup. Abbey slow-cooked a cubed squash with vegetable broth and a liberal dose of chili-garlic sauce, a condiment found in most asian markets. She didn't go in an Asian direction with it, however. After the mixture was nearly cooked, she finished the job in the ever-wondrous electric skillet, adding fresh garlic, and rosemary and thyme from the herb garden, cooking on medium until the squash was fully tender. At that point she mashed it until smooth, then added a splash of olive oil in the bowl. The resulting mix of fresh herbs and the heat of the chili and garlic was intoxicatingly spicy and deeply satisfying.