Butternut Squash Hummus

I promise, this is the last butternut squash recipe I’ll inflict on my (admittedly few) loyal readers. OK, that’s a lie. Butternut squash is the tofu of the vegetable world – it doesn’t taste like much on its own, but it works in almost any dish, from soup to bread, as a kind of comfort-food mush. Coming from someone who loves mushy food (give me overcooked broccoli over crunchy raw carrots any day), that’s a big compliment. So if I stumble across another great squash recipe, I’ll probably again be stacking my grocery cart high with the plastic containers of pre-cut butternut. (I roast my own pumpkin, acorn squash, and sweet potatoes, so I figure I deserve a break on the butternut squash.)

But this is the perfect recipe for the upcoming holidays and their accompanying holiday parties. On the line to bring a dish to help feed 25 people? Hummus is the choice of the lazy, because you can show up with one homemade container of dip and a bunch of store-bought pita chips or Triscuits and still get credit for making something in your own kitchen. As someone who melts her butter instead of creaming it while making cookies because she’s too lazy to manhandle the mixer, hummus is the perfect dish. I didn’t have a holiday party on my agenda, but I did have Volunteer Shift #597 at the Democratic Party headquarters, and because I’ve become known as “the treat lady” (when did I get old enough to be called “lady”?!), I couldn’t show up empty-handed. So I traded sweet for savory, got out the food processor, and whipped up a batch of butternut squash hummus.