Registered Dietitian Nutritionist
Sweet potatoes are a quintessential part of our family’s holiday traditions- in fact, I can’t remember a Thanksgiving or Christmas without them on the table. Growing up, my aunt was hailed for making an amazing sweet potato casserole with pecan crunch topping. Every casserole she made contained a whole lot of love… and butter… and sugar! Essentially, our traditional sweet potato casserole probably deserved a place on the dessert table…
Acorn squash is one of more than a dozen winter squash varieties and like the name indicates, it is a large replica of those oak tree acorns that pepper the ground during the fall and winter. Quite possibly you have passed by these cute green and orange gourds a time or two at your grocery store or farmer’s market. It has a delicate squash flavor with slightly sweet attributes and boasts a whopping 9 grams of fiber per 1 cup serving.
CONFESSION: Roasting is how I won over my brussel sprout hating parents. Yes, it was sly, but I accept full credit. While home from college visiting my family, I decided to make roasted brussel sprouts and carrots for my parents who had some intense, emotional dislike for these baby cabbages. They had memories, bad memories of ‘dead,’ smelly sprouts permeating their house when they were a kid. My parents were skeptical, but I made them curious enough to try their first bite in over 30 years!