One last "pumpkin" recipe: Creamy Orzo Risotto with Butternut Squash

Mark and I are still enjoying a few leftovers from Pumpkin Week at our house. During the week I slipped in one of our favorite Weight Watchers recipes. It uses butternut squash, which is almost pumpkin, right?

Here you go!

Creamy Orzo Risotto with Butternut Squash

The recipe is here.

I don't know about y'all out there in blogland, but before I made this recipe I had never cooked with orzo before. It looks like it wants to be a cousin to rice, but it's actually a very small pasta. I bought mine in a little box on the pasta aisle in the grocery store. Orzo and I are good friends now.

If you try this recipe, you will have to roast the chunks of butternut squash ahead of time. Don't be put off by that--it's not difficult, and it makes the squash taste super yummy.

I have often substituted chunks of spaghetti squash in this recipe, because we grow a lot of spaghetti squash in our garden. I think I actually like it just a little bit better than the butternut here. It has a lighter flavor, and by chunking it first and then roasting it, it doesn't turn into strands of "spaghetti" after it's been cooked.

One last thing--since it's a Weight Watchers recipe, of course it calls for lower-calorie ingredients. One of those is nonfat half-and-half. Never knew such a thing existed! But there it is, just waiting for me to pick it up from the dairy case. Mark likes to put it on his cereal when we have a little left over in the carton. Mmmmm...naughty boy!