Favorite items at HEB

Butternut Squash:
How I love it! It's by far my favorite vegetable, and it definitely does not get enough press! Many people who come to eat at my house say they've never had one! This is a travesty! It must stop! They are in season, and should be readily available at HEB. If you've eaten at my house, you've probably gotten my commercial for butternut squash, because I love it so!
Just a few tips: they can be expensive, just so you know. They are EXTREMELY dense, sort of like a sweet potato, and I am a wimp, so Rusty cuts them for me, or at least gets them started, a lot of the time. (He's the bomb.) I use them many different ways. I cut them up into pieces and put them in my steamer with some broccoli. Serve that with some grated cheddar cheese on top! So good! I also but it in my Chicken Pot Pie. It totally makes it! I just recently put it in my Crock Pot Chicken Noodle Soup. So you can do lots of things with it. If you use it in something like that, make sure you cook it a long time, or saute it a little before-hand because it takes them a while to get soft, because they're so dense. I have a recipe, if you're interested, for a Butternut Squash and Sausage soup where you puree the squash. That might sound weird...but it's really awesome!
Go get yourself a butternut squash. But leave some for me.


Bread Machine Ready-made mixes:
These are brilliant. Seriously. You can simply pour the contents of the box and some water into your bread machine, turn it on, and voila! Your house is filled with the smell of bread for hours, and that is worth it all to me. I feel so domestic when I bake bread, and all I did was pour the box in!!! I love fresh bread. I buy the Hawaiian bread mix often. It's so good.


Canned Chicken (in water, NOT oil!):
This might sound kind of gross...I was scared of it for years...but it's become a dear friend to me. Erin and I like to whip up chicken salad using this just about every Friday. All you do is mix the chicken with 1-2 T of mayo, and add some sliced almonds, grapes cut in half, and a little sugar. This is so good! Erin likes it on toasted bread, and I like it with Ritz Chips (kind of like crackers, but less crumbly.) This is so easy, and so good! I make it for lunch company (Shannan Feldman!) and when we go to the pool.
Believe it or not, I actually experimented and put the canned chicken in my Crock Pot Chicken Noodle Soup to see what would happen. It was great! I totally skipped the time consuming step of boiling and cutting up chicken, and just put it in the crock pot, and it was so easy!!! Again, this probably sounds gross, but it's just so easy and good I have to pass it along.
These are some of my favorite items on the Bacak family grocery list. I would really like to know some of y'alls!