Tales of an Overtime Cook

While the majority of my job involves sales, I work on sales on a corporate level, so it’s also a matter of building relationships with people, keeping customers happy, and other aspects of customer care. And while my company has a very loyal base of happy and completely satisfied customers, we are human, and like every company there’s glitches that pop up and issues that happen and customers that get upset.

And it’s my job to deal with those unhappy people. And if an unhappy customer who spent a hundred dollars is a problem, you can imagine that an unhappy customer who spent a hundred thousand dollars is about a thousand times more of a problem. But it happens. And we deal with it. And they come back, which means we did our jobs right.

So how do you deal with a multi-million dollar customer who’s unhappy? It’s a question I faced often when I started my job. My coworker, who’s been at this longer than I’ve been alive, gave me excellent advice. “The best solution,” she told me, “is the simplest one.” Don’t make excuses. Don’t try to validate a problem. Tell the truth. Explain what happened. Do whatever you can to make it better.

This advice may seem simple, but it never failed me. Much like these fries.

A couple of my friends were complaining that the recipes on this blog were all a bunch of fancy desserts, but they wanted real recipes, for real families to eat for real suppers. The best solution? It’s a simple one. These fries are healthy. They are delicious, and they have very few ingredients. And for any dieters out there, these fries not only taste like sweet potato fries, but they have the same texture. A starch-like dish for the calories of a vegetable? I say that’s a good deal.

Baked Butternut Squash Fries:

Ingredients:

1 large butternut squash (about 5 pounds)

1/4 cup olive oil

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Peel the butternut squash and cut it into fry shapes. (Try to make the fries as uniform as possible, to make sure they cook evenly.  Place the fries in a big bowl, and toss with oil, salt and pepper. Spread in a single layer on the cookie sheets. (I needed two, but use more if you need it. You don’t want to double them up on the tray, even a bit.)

Bake at 375 for 1 and half to 2 hours, turning approximately every half our. Serve warm. And of course, enjoy!

Note: If you have any leftover, which is relatively unlikely I had a difficult time getting photos of these! you can eat them cold as a delicious snack the next day!