but not for me

Made those. Last night. All by myself! (well, Nathan helped.)

We don't have a microwave, so I couldn't nuke the acorn squash to soften it for cutting beforehand. So Nathan used his manly strength and knife skillz to hack the thing in half (attack of the acorn squash as big as my head!!!) and then scooped out all the yuckies and seeds in the middle. He's a good boy.

I should have taken more pictures of the prep, but while the oven was preheating to 350 and the 1/4 cup of butter was melting on the stove, I parboiled (a new term I learned...though, I'm still not exactly sure why it was parboiling instead of regular boiling...except that only part of the squash was immersed in boiling water...) the exposed halves of the squash for about five minutes before putting them face up in our 9x13 baking pan and sprinkling them with melted butter (margarine) and just a leeetle bit of pumpkin pie spice. Then, I dumped a bit of melted margarine with about 1/8 cup (maybe less) of water in the hollowed out portion of the squash before piling the stuffing into the middle. Stuffing consisted of: 1/2lb of ground pork, half a diced onion, 1/2 a cup of stuffing, and some marjoram, oregano and salt, all mixed together (btdubs -- EWWWWWW, I hate touching raw meat.) Covered the whole thing in aluminum foil, and shoved it in the oven for about an hour and forty minutes and tada! Baked stuffed squash.

In retrospect, because the squash was so HUGE, I probably should have turned the oven up 25-50 degrees, to cut down the cooking time. I also probably include some celery and/or carrots (or maybe zucchini) in the stuffing, and would drizzle some of the butter/water mixture over the top of the stuffing once it was all settled in its nook in the squash. Things to note for next time!

We each had a quarter of the squash and stuffing for dinner last night, and then a quarter left over for lunch today! I was a little worried, but it reheated in the microwave at work no problem.

We also tried (and failed) to get up early this morning so we could do some WiiFit yoga and actually have time to eat before we left for work, but I guess the alarms woke us up in the middle of a sleep cycle or something, because we were SO VERY groggy at 6:30am. We'll try for tomorrow! And maybe go to bed a little earlier tonight.

-C