Stuffed Winter Squash

Cooking is as much about eating as Friday Night Lights is about American football. I'm sure everyone who knows me and reads this silly little blog just did a double take when I said "football" since I have never exhibited the slightest interest in football and often go out of my way to avoid American football to watch more civilized sports like hockey and roller derby. Yes, American football is central to the story line in Friday Night Lights, it's the glue that binds the characters together, the engine that drives the story line, but it's the character's attitudes and struggles that transpire off the field that suck us, the viewers, into this weekly teen drama with a capital D. It's like that with cooking. It's the act of supporting the community you live in buy buying from local farms. It's prepping a meal for friends, driving down to their house and having conversations in the kitchen while you spoon out the guts of acorn squash, setting the table together, laughing, debating, and yes, eating, that make cooking more about community than food itself. Food is something that makes it possible for a group to gather around a table, raise a glass of wine, and toast "Here's to good friends living large in Texas" (or where ever you happen to be).

Stuffed Winter Squash

2 Tbs olive oil

1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice

1 cup finely chopped mushrooms, such as cremini

1 yellow onion, chopped

2 cups cubed (small) celery root

2 small tart apples, peeled, cored and chopped into cubes

Salt and pepper to taste

2 medium acorn squashes 

Place your cooked rice in a bowl and place to the side. In a skillet, warm the olive oil over medium heat and cook the onions until transparent. Add the mushrooms, celery root and salt and pepper, reduce heat to low, cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Heat oven to 400 degrees F, halve the squash and spoon out the seeds and guts. Place the squash in a glass baking pan, and fill the bottom of the baking pan with 1/4" water. Take the mushroom/ onion mixture of the heat and incorporate the wild rice and apples. spoon the mixture into the squash, cover the baking pans with foil and poke a few holes in the foil, and cook for one hour.

Thanks to Vanessa over at PureHunger for the awesome pic!