One of my favorite things to do is to make recipes "Nikki-fied", which usually means, add a healthier kick to it. I do this all the time. It may be me being stubborn and a perfectionist, it may be me being a health nut, it may be me wanting a reason to make a new blog post, the world may ever know. However, I do know that I love butternut squash and pasta.

On Christmas Eve, my family likes to make Italian-style food. Perhaps it's because the food we eat on Christmas day is so Americanized. Perhaps it's because pasta food is such a comfort food for a cold December night. Either way, it's a tradition I don't mind. I found this recipe on Pinterest, and it instantly stuck out to me. Pasta, gorgonzola, bacon, butternut squash, pasta... it's all heavenly to me.

The first step was to make the sauce. The sauce is a rich butternut squash sauce. The first step is to roast the butternut squash with garlic.

When it was almost done, I started sizzling the pasta toppings in a sautee pan. I replaced bacon with turkey bacon, and added sun dried tomatoes.

After the squash and garlic were tender, I took it out. I don't love too much garlic, so I minced it after roasting. Then, I added both to a food processor. 

In a bowl, I whisked light cream instead of heavy cream, nonfat greek yogurt, diced tomatoes, 3/4 cup gorgonzola cheese, and low sodium chicken stock.

 

I got the squash processing away while adding my dairy mixture in through the tube.

Then, according to the recipe, I cooked the pasta according to bag instructions. My replacement here was organic linguine for regular linguine. The instructions called the save some pasta water to loosen up the sauce. However, since I used nonfat greek yogurt and my diced tomatoes were more watery, I didn't need to. 

I combined the pasta, sauce, and topping, and boom!

Ingredients: