Stuffed Acorn Squash

Some nights it's like scraping the bottom of the mental barrel trying to figure out what to make for dinner.

Who am I kidding? That's most nights.

As I've mentioned before, my husband has his routine meals, but I don't eat most of the things he eats (hello hamburger three times a week!).


Sometimes I see something in the store that makes me think, that might work.

That happened in Whole Foods last week. I saw a bag of mixed quinoa (red and white), buckwheat and millet. 

I wasn't really sure what to do with it, but last night I remembered I had an acorn squash that had been sitting around since the last time I went to Whole Foods (or maybe the time before that).

So I baked the squash, made the grain mix, cooked up some green lentils, chopped up an apple, drizzled some maple syrup, sprinkled some nutmeg, and VOILA! Dinner.

I wish I could say I loved it to death, but honestly, I don't love quinoa. The apple and squash were delicious.


The lentils had a really weird reaction in the water. They formed these little bubbles and looked like hundreds of eyes staring up at me. I felt like I was lost in Greek mythology.

Should I call them my Argus lentils?

I forgot to take a photo, so this is the dish squeezed into a container for lunch.

So what do you make when you're feeling uninspired?

Stuffed Acorn Squash

I'm on an extremely tight deadline right now so I dug out an old favorite from my days blogging at Healthy Writer.

I love Acorn Squash - really any kid of squash, and I especially love that you can use it as a bowl to stuff good food into - sort of like a casserole dish.

Ruthy did a similar post on pumpkins last year with Supper in a Pumpkin.

So this might be dubbed Casserole in a Squash.

I thought I had pictures of the ones I made, but apparently I didn't take any. I was probably too busy devouring it. These pictures give a pretty good sense of how it looks.

The mix for the filling can be pretty much whatever you want. I have used quinoa and dried cranberries and pecans. Sometimes I might use brown rice and lentils with apples and garam masala.
I've even seen a recipe that includes black beans, corn and kale.

My vegan daughter makes this every time she wants a comfort type food. She sometimes stuffs it with millet and an assortment of roasted veggies.

You can vary the dried fruits - cranberries, raisins, dates, apricots.
You can add in greens if you like. I generally don't like because they tend to get dry and crispy.
Celery, parsnips, carrots - pretty much anything you have on hand works well with the stuffing.

Some recipes call for sausage or ground turkey, but I've never done those.
 Here are some pictures of what it could look like -

I've made one with pearled quinoa stuffed in a mini-pumpkin.

Of course you could just drown the acorn squash in butter and maple syrup and a dash of nutmeg, but then it wouldn't be quite as healthy!

 

If you like video - here's Chef MD with his own recipe for stuffed acorn squash!