Tuesday dinner

Monthly Mingle Healthy Family Dinner

Tuesday dinner, originally uploaded by glitzypursegirl.

I was craving stuffed squash, but overcooked the squash in the oven, so i turned this into a rice casserole with a squash layer, super yummy and healthy, served with a salad on the side. INGREDIENTS

• 
• 1 cup brown long grain rice
• 1 bunch of carrots (yes those with the green leafy tops...i put the tops into my vegi stock)
• 4 crimini mushrooms
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 sweet mama squash
• 2 leeks
• 1/2 white onion
• approz 1 1/2 cups browned ground beef-but turkey would work too, we just had ground beef leftover
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup finely grated cheese (i used gouda-we had some, but parmesean would be great too!) it kind of needs to be a harder drier cheese to not make the rice gooey

I roasted my sweet mama squash at 375 degrees for 45 minutes on a cookie sheet with the squash skin facing up and filled the pan with water to kind of steam it, removed it from the oven and it was left to cool but since the skin seemed to fall apart I opted to layer the rice with the squash flesh in a casserole pan instead of stuffing the squash for fear it would leak! I browned the onion in the butter on top of the stove and after the onion carmelized I added the white sections of the leeks, thinly sliced, then let them cook about 5 minutes and then added the garlic thinly sliced with the mushrooms and let them meld together while the rice was steamed with just plain water and a basket of carrot sliced steamed above the rice, when all was done I layered 1/2 the rice, all the beef and onion into a large bowl and mixed it with the remainder of the rice and 1/2 the carrots to get it all incorporated then I put about 1/3 in a round casserole dish and spread a layer of squash over it then another layer of rice mixture then the cheese was grated with a microplane over the rice and the remaining rice was added, i baked it in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes and served with a salad of green organic lettuce, steamed carrots, slice mushrooms and croutons in annie's shitake mushroom vinagrette dressing...YUMMY!