A Bowl of Autumn

Last night before going grocery shopping, I took stock of all of the fresh ingredients that we had, apples, chestnuts, butternut squash, walnuts, and decided that I wanted to make a roast chicken with cornbread stuffing.

Not feeling like driving to Brookline for Trader Joe’s, we went to our local Dorchester Shaw’s which was total chaos! I quickly grabbed as many items on our list as possible, but my plans were foiled when we arrived in the poultry section. There were no free range chickens available. I have not been too into meat lately, but in an effort to add protein to my diet and to create meals that last for a couple of days, I thought a roasted chicken would be a good option. I have become more and more disgusted by factory farming, however, and with last week’s report that a large number of supermarket chicken brands were contaminated with salmonella, my roast chicken and stuffing quickly morphed into a one pot vegetarian wonder, autumn harvest stuffing with vegetarian sausage for protein. My family makes a real sausage stuffing, and the flavors are so good together, I figured it would taste just as good  vegetarian.

Ingredients

1 cup roasted chestnuts

1 cup chopped apple

1 cup chopped, roasted butternut squash

½ cup toasted walnut pieces

1 cup chopped carrots

2 cups cubed corn bread

¼ cup finely chopped red onion

10 Morningstar sausage links, chopped into small pieces

½ TSP each sage, cinnamon, cayenne pepper

Pinch of fresh ground pepper and sea salt

I started out the meal by cutting the butternut squash into cubes and scoring the chestnuts with a sharp knife. Then I left those both to roast at 405 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Then I got to chopping the carrot, apple, onion, veggie sausage and cornbread.

I got the apple, walnuts, sausage, and carrots started on a low flame, mixed with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil.

When the carrots were slightly softened, I added in the chopped cornbread and stirred it in, allowing it to soak up some of the juices that the apples and carrots made. Then I added all of the spices.

The last step was to add the crumbled chestnuts and chopped butternut squash.

The result was deeeelicious! It had everything we needed in a meal, protein, veggies, and carbs and even more than that it had a great sweet, spicy, and savory blend of favorites that tasted like autumn. Hubby mentioned this would be great served with turkey, and I agree, but it made a good one pot dinner in itself. Easy to clean up!

I had a hard workout at the gym today, so I am looking forward to some blog reading and Gossip Girl tonight. Thanks to all of you who announced my new site on your blogs or on Twitter. Looking at my traffic was a little discouraging, but since the new site was just made live yesterday I guess I should be patient!

Good night blog friends! 🙂