Stuffed Ball Squash

Ugly picture alert!  Dan promised to use his fancy camera to start taking my food photos so they won't be so darn ugly.  I'm hoping we can get that going next week.  Until then, ugly photos it is!

This recipe is a combination effort.  The woman selling the ball squash suggested stuffing them with sausage, rice and goat cheese.  I obviously don't do sausage so Dan and I tweaked it and decided on lentils, tomatoes, and kalamata olives as well.  We bought "western ranch" goat cheese, which was from Hidden Creek Farm.  I didn't want to do something with a lot of sauce, so I cooked the quinoa and lentils both in vegetable broth, then tossed everything in some olive oil and lemon juice.  That let the goat cheese and the squash hold their own and really come through.

Ingredients:
2 medium ball squash
1/2 cup cooked quinoa (I cooked mine in the rice maker, 1/2 c quinoa, 1 c veggie broth)
1/2 cup cooked lentils (boiled these guys for about 25 minutes in veg broth)
1/2 can of tomatoes, drained and diced
handful of kalamata olives, roughly chopped
3-4 oz flavored goat cheese
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp lemon juice

Cook your lentils and your quinoa.  Cut the top off of your squash and scoop of the seeds and guts, like you would a pumpkin.  Make sure you don't scrape it too thin, leave some squash to eat!  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  I dumped my squash guts, but someone else told us she separates the seeds and roasts them to snack on later.

Mix your quinoa, lentils, kalamata olives and tomatoes in a bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper to taste and mix.  Chop or crumble your goat cheese and mix that in as well.  We did this when our stuffing was warm, the goat cheese kind of melted and it was DELICIOUS that way, but you can also mix it when cold to make sure you get melty pockets of goat cheese instead.

Stuff your squash and bake on 350 until the squash is cooked through (when you can pierce it with a fork).  This was about 30 minutes for us.