stuffed squash–the cutest food

This is a recipe for one of my favorite dinners of late.

Alex’s Cute lil’ Stuffed Squash

Ingredients

• Love
• Happy face
• Round squash (I used 4 round-ish squash)
• 1 package (about 3 lbs.) ground meat (tofu will work too-I used ground turkey for this creation)
• 1 cup of bread crumbs
• 1 cup of Parmesan cheese (or 2 cups if you are as obsessed as I am); another 1/4 cup for sprinkling the top
• 1 cup finely chopped cooked carrots
• 2 small onions, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped garlic
• Any other veggies you would like (kale, spinach, celery, etc.)
• Basil
• Olive oil
• 1/2 cup of butter (I like Smart Balance)
• Salt and pepper to taste

[Excuse the pictures. They are only from my iPhone.]

First, start with your squash (I used beautiful squash from my CSA box. The green squash is called “eight ball squash” and the white squash is a type of “sunburst” squash.) Scrub the squash clean and then cook them in the microwave for about 10 minutes in a small dish with about 1/2 inch of water.

Heat oven to 400. Cook the ground turkey in a skillet alone and set aside. Cook carrots, chop, and set aside (I cheated and cooked my carrots in the microwave.) Then–like almost everything I make–get the garlic, olive oil, and onions going…

After the onions cook for a couple minutes alone with the garlic, add the chopped carrots to the mixture. If you are using other veggies, you can add them to the skillet at this time too. Add salt and pepper as you like. While that is cooking, cut the tops off of the squash and scoop the insides into a strainer. Let the insides sit in the strainer in the sink and keep shaking it to get most of the liquid out.

So cute.

Mix the cooked ground turkey, bread crumbs, onion/carrot/garlic mix, and the squash-insides together in a large bowl. Add about 1/4 cup of melted butter and mix again. Then add the Parmesan cheese.

Now stuff ’em! Pour the rest of the butter over the top of the stuffed squash and then sprinkle a little bit more Parmesan cheese on top of each.

I had a lot of leftover stuffing so I just put it in a pan to cook on its own. (Of course I drizzled it with butter and Parmesan too).

Then, bake your cute little squash in the oven at 400 for about 40 min. Check the squash with a fork periodically to make sure it is tender enough and doesn’t overcook. Fork should go in easy once it is good and ready.

Mangia!

Let me know if you try it!