One Pot, One Pan, 10 Minutes = Healthful Dinner

Okay, so I'm fudging a little bit, but let me break it down for you: I just spent about 7 minutes from start to finish making some fantastic healthy (yes, healthy) macaroni and cheese. Appeals to the shorties and the grown-ups alike!

Make ahead:

• 2 boxes elbow macaroni (I used one box of 100% whole wheat and one box of Barilla Plus)

When you have a few extra minutes on a Sunday, throw a big pot filled with water on the stove and boil these pastas, then drain them and rinse them in cold water. Toss them in a Ziploc and forget about them.

• 1 whole butternut squash

Some afternoon when you're taking the kids out to play in the backyard, halve the butternut squash length-wise. This can be a difficult task, as the skin is very tough, and that's why I say a silent thank you to hilarious Uncle Reggie for his surprise gift of a RonCo 52-billion-piece knife set! Shipped directly to our door! With a free flavor injector! and pull out the big cleaver. Drizzle some olive oil on the bottom of a pan and place squash open-face down, cover with foil and bake for about an hour. Or so. Because if you're outside playing with the kids and you come in 2 hours later and the house smells warm and yummy, the squash will be okay. I'm just sayin'. Scoop out the meat and put it in a tupperware container. Forget about it.

A few weeks later, do this:

Get out your big pot. Saute 1/2 a sweet onion in about 1/4 of olive oil. Sprinkle in about 1/8 c of flour and stir every few minutes until the flour is just beginning to brown and the onions are wilting. Add a dash of nutmeg or, if one is surprisingly out of nutmeg, you can pretend that the "allspice" bottle is actually labeled "nutmeg" and no one will be able to tell. Just a hypothetical. Pour in 4 1/2 cups of skim milk. I actually used 5 oz of evaporated milk to just get the damn thing out of my pantry. Bring to a slow simmer, stirring frequently. Scoop out ~2 cups of the butternut squash (oh yeah, that stuff I forgot about!) and mash it with a fork in a measuring cup. Should be nice and soft, so you're really just mushing it around. Add 4 cups of sharp cheddar cheese, shredded, and 1/2 - 1 cup of parmesan. Stir until cheese is melted in a stringy fashion, then dump in the squash. Stir for a few minutes, until everything looks evenly distributed.

Spray a casserole pan with cooking spray and pour the elbow macaroni (you know, the other stuff you forgot about) into it. Pour cheese mixture on top of macaroni, bake for 30 minutes at 350* and et, voila, cheesy, squashy, pasta-y goodness.