Stuffed Acorn Squash

Now that the clock has been pushed back an hour, it seems winter is practically here. It's slightly depressing to see dusk at 4pm, but luckily there's a whole bunch of squash in season to lessen the sting of knowing snow is just around the corner. Not only is squash really good for you(and really tasty, too), but there's something comforting to me about eating squash. I don't know why, but the cold weather always makes me want to bake cookies and roast some squash. Acorn and butternut are my favorites, and pumpkin isn't bad either!

I wanted to do something different than soup, or mashing my acorn squash like I usually do with butternut and eat it like mashed potatoes, or twice baked like a casserole. I figured anything stuffed is a winner (potato skins? Roasts? Mushrooms? Am I right?) and decided to stuff my acorn squash that's been sitting in a basket for a week. I started with your basics: onion, garlic, carrot, and celery sauteed in olive oil. I added some Italian seasoning and oregano at the beginning so the dried herbs would  "bloom" as everything cooked. I knew I was going to be making a stuffing with veggies but I also wanted to get some protein in the meal, too.

So I decided to boil up some quinoa in my veggie broth I told you about earlier this week. One tip about quinoa, ESPECIALLY if you've never cooked it before or are buying it in bulk: rinse it well in a kitchen strainer before cooking it. If you don't it can be bitter because there is an outer coating of saponins that need to be rinsed off.  My recommendation is to rinse ALL quinoa whether it's in bulk, or in a bag that says you don't have to rinse it because I've forgotten and the result is really not as good, especially if you're serving people who have never had it before and they will think they dislike quinoa because it's bitter when in actuality it just wasn't rinsed first.

While my quinoa was cooking, I threw in a little bit of chopped apple and some small grape tomatoes I had also cut up. I let it simmer, covered until the quinoa was almost finished, but not quite because I planned on baking it so I didn't want it really tender at this point.







Once my quinoa was finished, I put it in the pan with the stuffing and then tossed in some homemade bread crumbs I had in my freezer.










Then I loaded it into my halved squash, and baked, covered for about an hour, removed the cover and baked for an additional 10 minutes.





After that, it came out of the oven looking like this:

And after cutting into it:

Happy Autumn!

Stuffed Acorn Squash

• 1 small onion, chopped
• 3 gloves garlic, chopped
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 1 small carrot, chopped
• 1 medium apple, chopped
• handful grape tomatoes, chopped
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 cup quinoa
• 1 cup vegetable broth
• 1/2-1 cup bread crumbs, depending on how dry your ingredients are
• 1 acorn squash
• salt & pepper

Start the stuffing by sauteing onions, garlic, celery and carrot. Add salt and pepper, Italian seasoning, and oregano and let it cook on medium-low heat(this is setting 3 on my electric range). If it starts to dry out a little bit, add some vegetable broth to lightly steam-fry. Cover saute, and while that is cooking, rinse your quinoa very well in a tight kitchen strainer, until all bubbles dissipate. Combine quinoa and broth in a small saucepan. Allow to come to a simmer, then lower heat to a low simmer for about 15-20 minutes. After you've started the quinoa, add apples and tomatoes, and some more salt and pepper to the stuffing, cover and allow to steam, stirring occasionally while quinoa cooks. Split your acorn squash in half, scoop out the seeds, and you may need to slice a small piece of skin off the bottom so it will sit stable in your pan. Oil the entire squash using a brush. When the quinoa is almost finished, add it to the rest of the stuffing, stirring in, and adding bread crumbs as you need until it holds together loosely, almost like a turkey stuffing. Taste test at this point for seasoning. Scoop stuffing into the squash, cover and bake at 350F for 50 minutes-1 hour depending on how soft it is after 50 minutes(it should be fork tender), take cover off and bake an additional 10 minutes to brown as you like.