Yesterday was another great day spent at home in PA with my parents. Jeff and I absolutely love going home and cannot wait until we move there permanently after he graduates PT school! Until then though, we have to stick out our weekend trips there. We always hate Sunday afternoons, because that means that Sunday night is approaching, which means traveling back to NY and almost always hitting traffic :/ So, we figured cooking a great dinner would make the night better!

Our day started out at The Church of the Good Samaritan. I LOVE this church and hope that one day it will be our home church. After, I headed to Panera Bread with my dear friends Carly & Liza to grab lunch and catch up on life! I ordered the Black Bean Soup and a Salad.


After lunch, my mom and I headed to Wegman's to get ingredients for our stuffed acorn squash we wanted to make! We had a lot of fun browsing through the bulk section and picking out stuff for healthy lunches for the two of this week. I also found a really cute bowl which you will see in a minute (and probably lots this week). Here are the ingredients we gathered...how beautiful are the trees? I love love love fall and don't want it to turn to winter.


Ingredients:

• 2 acorn squash (which you will cut in half, so it makes 4 servings)
• 4-5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• 1 cup diced sweet onion
• 2 large apples, peed and diced
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup fresh chopped cranberries
• 5-6 slices of gluten-free bread cut into cubes
• 1 cup vegetable broth, or more if you like
  
• salt and pepper to taste

We found this recipe on Gluten Free Goddess' website! Now obviously ours didn't turn out quite as bright and beautiful as hers, but I think they tasted just as good.

First, cut the squash in half and take out all of the seeds. Sprinkle with some olive oil or maple syrup (we didn't use syrup), set the oven to 400 degrees and bake for about an hour. Ours didn't bake quite as quickly as we hoped, so we put in the microwave for the last 6 minutes to soften them up. Also, note to self: all squash is extremely hard to cut, so find your husband for some help.


Once the squash is in the oven you can begin making the stuffing. The recipe we looked off of used gluten-free corn bread as the stuffing, however we just used Udi's bread and toasted it in the oven. So, cut up either cornbread or regular bread and toast in the oven for about 20 minutes.


While your bread is in the oven, you can begin cutting up your apples, onions, and cranberries. This recipe is much quicker when two people are working together :) And more fun. My mom cut the apples and onions while I worked on the cranberries.



Once all of your ingredients are cut, you can begin heating 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large skillet. Stir in the 1 tablespoon of thyme and 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon before adding the onions, apples, and cranberries. Cook until everything is softened (doesn't take long). Remember to check on your bread and take it out of the oven once it is toasted a bit!


Once everything is softened, remove from the skillet and set aside to cool a bit. Stir in the bread or cornbread into this mixture. While mixing, add in the vegetable broth (we used a little more than a cup to make the stuffing softer). You can also add a little bit of olive oil if you need to.

Finally, stuff the baked acorn squash with the stuffing and place back in the oven for a few minutes to heat up! We topped ours with some melted cheese.




Here is an upclose picture of the acorn squash! I had never had this type of squash before, and it was great. Even Jeff and my Dad enjoyed it (and they are not ones for trying new or "weird" things in my Dad's words). However my dad wasn't too happy about the 14 dollar organic chicken that I made my mom buy at Wegman's :) This is the number one reason why Jeff and I don't eat meat that often-way too expensive for our budget.