Stuffed squash

At the moment, all of my squash seems to be coming in at once.  I'll walk out one day to see some cute little 3 inch baby squash and come out the next to see mutant jumbo squash in its place.  So I've been trying different recipes with squash.  I chopped some up with some other veggies and threw them in foil and grilled them. I made some pretty delicious zucchini bread.  And now I've made stuffed squash.  

It all started out by seeing a recipe in my Cooking Light cookbook for cheesy beef and rice casserole. I've had some blocks of cheese in my fridge I've been meaning to use up, so this seemed like the perfect application. And Joe doesn't turn anything down if it has cheese on it.  But the recipe itself sounded more like a filling for something than a meal (in their notes they even say that it would be great inside burritos).  So I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and use up my cheese and extra squash by making stuffed squash.

One of my zucchini squash had gotten to gargantuan size so I thought that the standard cut zucchini in half, scoop out contents and stuff with filling idea may not work.  Then I saw this super cute alternative to this approach on this blog.  Basically you make little "bowls" out of pieces of squash. Neat!

My massive zucchini.  I named him Bernie.

So I started on the recipe.  Now I change things up sometimes based on what I have already, so I've made some alterations to the original casserole.  My version is below.

Cheesy turkey and rice casserole stuffing 

1/2 pound ground turkey (I use 93% lean) 

1 cup chopped onion 

1 cup chopped green bell pepper 

1/4 cup water 

1 tablespoon chili powder 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (I had fresh, so I used it instead)

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained  

1 (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained  

1 cup instant brown rice (uncooked)

1/2 cup fat-free sour cream (I used fat free Greek yogurt)

1/2 cup sliced green onions 

Salt (I used about a teaspoon)
Pepper

Dash of red pepper flakes (totally optional - only add if you want some heat)

3/4 cup (3 ounces) reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 375.

Cook first 3 ingredients in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until meat is browned, stirring to crumble. Add water and next 6 ingredients (water through rice); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer an additional 5-6 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Remove from heat. Add the sour cream and sliced green onions and mix well.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you have giant squash, cut them into 3-4 inch long pieces and carefully scoop out the filling, being careful to leave some at the bottom to make a bowl.  Here's a picture of what mine looked like.

The yellow guy you see in the back there was part of a fat yellow squash I already had in my fridge, picked a few days prior from my garden.  I have 4 varieties of squash in my garden.

After doing some scooping out, seeing how much filling could actually fit into the zucchini bowls, and seeing how much filling I had made, I decided to use another (smaller) zucchini from the garden to stuff the traditional way.

Once I had them all carved out, I salted and peppered each one, and then added my filling.  I put them all on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

I let them bake about 20 minutes, when the squash started to soften.  Then, I added the cheddar cheese to each and let it bake until the cheese was melted and the squash was sufficiently cooked through.

Here's the finished product!

I did still have some filling left over though.  So if you make this recipe and don't have 4-5 squash to use up, I would either halve the filling part of the recipe, or resign yourself to have extra filling you'll just have to make into burritos.  :)