This squash made a great dinner for two. It was quick to prepare on grocery shopping night, and it was a delicious and nutritious meal.
"Garden Meals"
"Garden Meal" is a term I use when I'm trying to use up a bunch of different ingredients that have come from my garden and my mom's. It's the time of year when I start to inherit acorn squash, butternut squash, and spaghetti squash, and I need to come up with something to do with them. In my little garden, we are still getting lots of tomatoes and basil, and I recently harvested a bunch of tiny onions. With all these fresh ingredients, I had to come up with something to make.
A Simple, Low-Effort Meal
I am also extremely pregnant at the moment (baby girl is due in exactly 2 weeks as I write this post!), and I had to do a ton of grocery shopping on the day I made this particular dinner; my family has been coming to help me prepare a bunch of freezer meals for after the baby comes, and I needed lots of ingredients. I visited Costco, Aldi, and Meijer in my grocery marathon.
SO I needed to devise a simple, low-effort meal for the evening. This stuffed spaghetti squash is what I came up with.
Quick Tips
1. Think Ahead - Although you could roast your spaghetti squash in the oven, I cooked mine in the crockpot. I set it before I left for the store so the squash was about ready to use when I got home.
2. Easiest Chicken - Buy a rotisserie chicken at Costco, and shred that up to use as the meat in this recipe. Trust me, you will thank yourself later.
3. Multitask - I actually prepped my broth while I made this meal and then threw everything into the crockpot I used to make the squash to simmer overnight.
4. Multiply - turn this dinner for two into a dinner for four by cutting the stuffed squash in half and serving with rice or your favorite grain.
5. Reduce Waste - Save the seeds to make roasted squash seeds, use the chicken bones and scraps to make homemade chicken bone broth, save the leftover chicken meat for a quick and easy lunch prep, and compost any veggie scraps.
6. To Taste - As with most of my recipes, season to taste. This is how we make food we love and how we become better cooks.
Stay riled up & keep the joy in cooking <3
Summertime Stuffed Spaghetti Squash
Ingredients
- 1 medium spaghetti squash
- 2 Roma tomatoes
- 1/2 yellow onion (or 5 pearl onions)
- 1 bell pepper
- fresh basil
- 6 slices fresh mozzarella
- roughly 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken
- smooth olive oil
- robust olive oil (optional)
- Italian seasoning blend
- garlic powder
- salt
- black pepper
Directions
- Slice the spaghetti squash in half, and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and guts. Place both halves of the squash face down in the slow cooker. Add 1 cup of water, and cook for 3-4 hours on high or 4-5 hours on low.
- Cut the onions, bell pepper, and tomatoes into large pieces.
- Shred the squash into "spaghetti" with a fork. Add olive oil (robust if you have it), salt, and black pepper to taste and mix.
- Heat a pan over medium heat. Once the pan is hot, add about a 1 Tbsp of smooth olive oil (or enough to cover the bottom of the pan). Once the oil is hot, cook the peppers and onions for a couple of minutes until they're slightly soft.
- Add the tomatoes to the pan and cook for a couple more minutes while adding salt, black pepper, Italian seasoning, and garlic powder to taste.
- Add the chicken to the mix, and remove the pan from heat.
- Load the chicken & veggie mix onto the two spaghetti squash halves, and top each with a few slices of fresh mozzarella cheese.
- Bake the stuffed squash at 425 F for 10 minutes to warm everything up and get the cheese melted.
- Top with fresh basil and enjoy!
When are you planning to try this recipe? Drop a comment to let me know.
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