This recipe has not only been cooked with Trader Joe’s ingredients but it has also been inspired by a Trader Joe’s employee! This season was the first time I tried cooking with an acorn squash and it was as a result of the recommendation of a Trader Joe’s employee at my local Trader Joe’s. He recommended baking the squash with cinnamon and butter and I improvised the recipe a bit by stuffing apples and cranberries. The dish was delicious and one of the many reasons I keep visiting TJ’s 🙂 1 green acorn squash 1 apple (any baking apple would do; or for that matter any apple at hand would be fine too) handful of dried cranberries 1tsp lime juice 3 Tbsp brown sugar 1/4 Tbsp butter (room temperature) 1/4 tsp cinnamon (or cardamom) 1. Pre-heat oven to 375F 2. Cut the acorn squash into vertical halves. 3. Using a spoon remove the inner seeds. 4. Meanwhile prepare the apple-cranberry mixture. Cut an apple into small byte sized pieces. 5. Squeeze a little bit of lime juice so that apple does not discolor. 6. Mix the apple, cranberries, sugar, butter and cinnamon together. 7. Stuff the hollow acorn squash halves with the apple-cranberry mixture. 8. Press gently so that the stuffing won’t spill during baking or transporting the squash halves to and from the oven. 9. Place the squash on an aluminum foil and bake at 375F for half an hour. Increase the oven temperature to 400F and bake for another 10mins. 10. After 40-mins of baking, check on the squash. Sometimes I do need an extra 10more minutes depending on the size of the squash. Pierce the yellow squash mass gently with a fork to check for done-ness. Bake for 10 more minutes if desired at 375F. If the squash seems to be getting very dry I cover it with an aluminum foil for the last 10mins of baking. 11. Server warm on its own or with a dollop of ice-cream!
