Another beautiful evening dining out on the deck. We are squeezing out the last few summer nights before school starts this week. Seems like we just started summer with swimming lessons, play dates, weekend trips, and sprinklers but we are not by any means saying goodbye to our fresh and local produce! Tonight we enjoyed stuffed squash, kale Caesar salad, fresh melon chunks, and mint chocolate chip cookie sundaes.
I found a recipe a while back for a pumpkin stuffed with bread and cheese. I had that in mind tonight when I was putting this meal together. I started with my two stuffing squash, find a dish that fits our squash.
Spray the dish or the squash will stick. Take a knife and work around the cap of the squash. You will need to scoop out the center of the squash to fill it with the goods I have planned. Save the squash insides for later and save the caps too, they will be placed back on to cook.
Take the ends of a loaf of bread and cube it (this is a great place to use stale bread), cook 6 slices of bacon, and shred about 2/3 a cup of Gruyere cheese.
Add salt, pepper, and garlic that is coarsely chopped. Give this a toss and stuff each of the squash almost to the top. Slowly drizzle cream into the cavity. I know, this is kinda decadent but go ahead and splurge, I give you permission. Place the dish into a preheated 375 degree oven and bake for about 40 minutes or until the squash is soft.
I have some extra filling so I decided to make a topping for my kale salad. I sprayed some foil and spread the extra bread, bacon, and cheese on a cookie sheet and baked it until it crisped up.
I crumbled it up to add to my salad at the last minute, I can’t believe how great this quick little add on was to the salad. What salad? This salad…
Start by taking the stems out of your kale (save them too!) and roughly chopping it.
Put a little bit of the dressing on the kale and massage it by hand. I put it in the fridge for about an hour and a half so it would soften up.
At the last minute, just before serving, I tossed it with the cheese and bacon croutons I made and some of the little cherry tomatoes from the share. Perfect!
We had a great meal and full of Springdell goodies!
Side note: Take a look at the extras I saved from this meal to go into smoothies this week! As Jess and I say, let no veggie go unloved. Enjoy!
