Stuffed Roasted Acorn Squash

I am not setting out to be a food blogger, but I’m realizing that an ongoing need from clients is coaching on how and what to cook. That means they need real recipes I can offer and recommend. Personally, I do a lot of very simple meals or prepare single ingredient items, which I combine into meals that suit my needs for the day, but I think my personal routine will be another blog post.

I find that I make so many individual recipe modifications, it is very hard to just say go try this recipe or here’s a cookbook to use. I largely prefer paleo cookbooks for their whole food, vegetable laden meals, but they also have too much fat to eat for them to be the core source of your nutrition without substantial modifications. I usually cut fats  and nuts to get to the core of the recipe for paleo cookbooks, and then add later as a topper if I want more fat rather than automatically baking it into the recipe. I don’t like light cookbooks because they tend to use too many artificial ingredients that make me squirm. And I LOVE some of the rich beautiful cookbooks from William- Sonoma, but I reserve those recipes for special occasions because of all the special ingredients and assorted extra planning that requires.

So here I am with my meal prep idea, inspired by the two acorn squash sitting on my kitchen counter waiting for attention. I’m not even sure you can call it a recipe, but it did make for a decent dinner.

Ingredients.

2 large acorn squash

3 small yellow onions

2 bell peppers

2 pounds of extra lean ground turkey

1 tablespoon of avocado oil

1 teaspoon of sea salt

1 teaspoon of chili powder

2 teaspoons of smoked paprika

2 teaspoons of garlic powder

Steps.

1. Preheat the oven at 375. If you have convection roast, use it.
2. Cut the acorn squash in half and scoop out the seeds, then quarter them.
3. Roast the acorn squash face up on a cookie sheet at 375 for 45 minutes. Until fork tender.
4. Meanwhile dice onions and bell pepper.
5. Saute onions and bell pepper with 1 tablespoon of avocado oil until onions are translucent.
6. Set vegetables aside and then brown the ground turkey adding in all of the spices. Combine into one skillet or dish once finish.
7. Remove squash from the oven.
8. Spoon 1/8th of the turkey and vegetable mix over squash to eat up.

Macros and calories.

Serves 8. 41g carbs/4.1g fat/31.5g protein. 324 calories.

If you need more fat, you could top with crumbled feta or goat cheese or drizzle with some olive oil. Or maybe a poached egg if you wanted it to be for breakfast as a post workout meal. Oooh, I might try that tomorrow.