I haven’t been grocery shopping in about a week and a half, and have no plans on going shopping until at least Sunday or Monday. I also am eating Paleo, which is very vegetable heavy and there is a limit to how much produce I can buy at once, so you can imagine our stock of produce is slowly dwindling to next to nothing.
I was trying to come up with a nice meal idea that would use the produce I had at home, and that didn’t take much work to make at all. My friend Vera suggested stuffed butternut squash, so with that idea in mind, I threw together something that I thought would taste good- I loosely based it off of my homemade breakfast sausage recipe, and while my breakfast sausage is delicious, this combination is even more delicious and the meat is even more moist.
I will be making it again, that’s for sure!
While I thought these looked super fancy when I was making them, I realize that the photograph doesn’t do it justice… Oh well.
These are Paleo, grain free, and just simply delicious.
You can make it with ground turkey in place of ground chicken.
If you’re a vegan, my friend Raquel suggested trying this with tempeh in place of the ground chicken.
While I hasn’t originally intended this as a Thanksgiving dish, it would actually be a perfect accompaniment to your Thanksgiving dinner table.
Stuffed Butternut Squash Recipe- Paleo, Grain Free, Sugar Free
Ingredients:
5 small butternut squash (or 3-4 larger ones)
800 grams or 1 3/4 lbs ground chicken or turkey
1/2 cup minced onion flakes or 1 chopped large onion
3 apples- I used 2 green one red- 2 cups total chopped
1/3 cup roughly chopped almonds (feel free to leave out to make it more allergy friendly, or replace with another type of nut like walnuts or pecans)
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (or more to taste)
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground sage
1/4 cup coconut oil (or other mildly flavored oil) poured over it all
Instructions:
1. Split your butternut squashes in half lengthwise and de-seed them.
2. Chop your onions and apples and nuts and then mix them with the rest of the ingredients other than the oil.
3. Stuff the meat mixture into the hollow of the butternut squashes.
4. Pour the oil over the entire batch, trying to distribute it as evenly as possible.
5. Bake at 350, for 45-60 minutes, or until the butternut squash is fully soft and the meat is starting to brown at the top.
Serve hot.
Enjoy!
Ever make stuffed butternut squash before? Does this look like a recipe you’d try?
What is your favorite recipe that you came up with based on random items you had in your house?
