Perfectly Simple Stuffed Squash

I'm not the "strictly plan a menu and shop" type of person. I decide what to cook according to what I have, or spontaneously when seeing something special in the shop.

So, when I saw these squashes, almost mini-pumpkins, which were just perfect for stuffing, I grabbed a couple. Then I got some ground turkey, even though ground beef or chicken could also be used. Years ago when I was the cook for the local day care center, we learned that turkey had more minerals than chicken and less fat than beef. It was highly recommended, so I started cooking with it more than before.

I mixed the ground turkey with diced onion, granulated garlic, dehydrated dill and a small container of tomato paste. That was it. Of course you can add whatever seasonings you like or have in your pantry.

With a strong knife I split the squash and emptied the halves of seeds. Then I stuffed them and baked on a Pyrex type of baking dish 180c (360f,) though any baking pan would do. I have a fan oven and turned it off when I could see that the meat was done and the squash "bubbly."

If you're serving the stuffed squash as a simple meal, just add a salad and carbohydrate, if you eat carbs. They also reheat very well.

Enjoy, and let me know if you've tried the recipe and how you changed it, thanks.

Keep Trying Something New When Cooking

As you must know by now, unless you're new to this blog, I cook and eat a lot of vegetables.  My cooking has and still evolves, changes.  Here's a new version of my baked vegetables.

From bottom up, you have sweet potatoes, pumpkin, eggplant with garlic in the slices, an onion and in the middle there's a beet.  I was surprised to discover, from my daughter, that beets don't have to be boiled.  You can bake them.

I dribbled a bit of oil on the vegetables, a bit more generously on the eggplant and then baked them.  I love those bake and serve pans.  They make life/cooking/cleaning much easier. This is a very healthy and easy to make dish.  Enjoy!

Simply Delicious

A few weeks ago I bought a "mini-pumpkin," or dalorit as it's called in Hebrew.  I kept visioning  myself stuffing it with chopped meat.  For some strange reason, I was craving a meal based on this idea.

I figured that it's a bit risky to serve something like that to most guests, because it's pretty much an entire meal, and another problem was that we only had one, which would make just two servings.  Finally on Thursday I bought some ground chicken and didn't have guests lined up for Friday night.  In a sense you can say that eating half a mini-pumpkin was the closest we had to a Thanksgiving meal.

I cut the dalorit in half, as you can see here, cleaned out the seeds and put it in a pretty baking pan.
Then I mixed the ground poultry (you can use chicken, turkey, beef or any combination) with tomato past, onion, an egg and spices.
I had about 2/3 a kilo, just under 3 lbs of ground chicken.  It was about double the amount I needed for the two servings.

Then I stuffed the two halves with the chopped meat.
I used the leftover meat mixture to make a meatloaf, which conveniently fit in my oven to bake at the same time.

I baked them until they seemed ready. Every oven is different, so I can't tell you what temperature and for how long.  Sorry

The stuffed mini-pumpkin looked pretty good when it came out of the oven.

And then we had to wait until Friday night to eat it.  I was pretty nervous, because I usually serve a pretty standard meal, animal protein, a starch for my husband, salad and at least two vegetables.  That's a standard meal.  On Friday nights, my husband has soup and sometimes some corn on the cob, too.

You can't get a full idea of the size from the picture, but they were each a meal.  I had also baked two tiny sweet potatoes.  All I ate was my salad, the sweet potato, which I really didn't need and my serving of stuffed mini-pumpkin.  My husband had the same, plus rice, soup and corn.  I felt stuffed!  And I'm a big eater.

You can do the same with any similar type of vegetable.  The advantage of this size is that there really isn't any need to serve anything else besides the salad.

I could have flavored the chopped meat differently and probably will next time.

If you give this a try, please let me know how it comes out and other suggestions, thanks.