recipes | Hicks House

It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a year since my first post. Since the start of the blog we’ve gotten married, and officially moved into our home.

I wanted to take a moment to thank those that have followed along from the beginning and those that have recently started. I have tried to keep up a regular schedule and post at least once a week and with the exception of the week we were on our honeymoon pretty much succeeded. As I mentioned in this post I love filling all my friends, family and readers in on what’s going on in our little corner of the world, and I love how this has created a diary of sorts of all that we have accomplished in the past year (and will continue to accomplish going forward).

Recently I’ve also created a Facebook page for Hicks House as well as an Instagram account @hicks_house where I post sneak peaks of in the works projects that have yet to be blogged about. Please continue to follow along into year two over at Hicks House as we go into year two and continue to make our house our home!

The next chapter has us looking forward to such things as grass, finishing painting, decorating and making custom paintings, curtains and wood working projects and whatever else we think of as we live and grow in our home.

stuffed acorn squash

Anyone who knows me, knows I’m not much of a cook. I’m an avid recipe searcher – but generally lack at the execution aspect. With the exception of a few things that I make (all things that involve the oven not the stove top) Ken is the main cook in our house since we prefer to eat non-burnt, non-raw inside food. However, last week my sister posted a photo of an acorn squash she had cooked and it just looked amazing. Then when I went to the grocery store over the weekend there they were right up front on display and on sale Acorn squash. I HAD to have one. So I bought it.

(Ken opens fridge)
Ken: What is this thing?
Me: It’s an acorn squash.
Ken: What do you do with it?
Me: I have no idea. Nicole posted a picture on Facebook and it looked really good so I got one.
Ken: Have you ever had it before?
Me: No. But I bet it’s awesome. (Text’s Nicole to see how she cooked it Answer “I googled it.” Crap now I have to google it. I have this weird looking squash thing and no idea how to even begin cooking it.)

So we looked up a bunch of recipes and most called for ingredients we didn’t have. Since I had not planned ahead and already gone to the store, this was no good so we decided to take a couple aspects of several different recipes and make our own. What’s the worst that could happen? If it totally sucks we could just order pizza right?

Most of the recipes called for baking it with butter and brown sugar and serving it as a side dish. (which is what my sister did) That seemed pretty good, however that seemed like way too much squash to have as a side for two people, and a lot of work for just a side dish so we decided to turn it into more of a meal.

BEST IDEA EVER I’m not even remotely exaggerating when I say that this was not only the best meal I’ve had at home in a long time, it’s also quite possibly the best meal I’ve had PERIOD in a long time. It captured all of the feelings of fall in a single meal. It was so good I decided to post my first (and with my skills possibly my last) recipe.

So here’s what we did so you can create this masterpiece yourself:

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 65 minutes (it’s worth the wait I promise)

Ingredients:

1 medium to large acorn squash
3 links pre-cooked italian style chicken sausage (you could use pork sausage as well just make sure you cook it)
1 cup dry stuffing mix (we used turkey flavor because that’s what we had)
3/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup diced onion
2 cloves diced garlic (if you’re using jarred minced garlic this is 2 teaspoons)

Preheat oven to 400. If using the pre cooked sausage links cut into 1/4 inch thick slices then quarter them. In a large bowl combine stuffing mix until most of the liquid is absorbed. (we had a little extra – no big deal) Add the sausage, garlic and onion and mix.

Cut the acorn squash lengthwise and clean out, deseed the cavity. Place the two halves on a cookie sheet and press as much of the stuffing mixture into each cavity as you can fit allowing it to mound up on top. Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes until the stuffing starts to brown on the top. Remove from oven and tuck aluminum foil around the squash halves. Return to oven and cook an additional 30-35 minutes until squash is fork tender.

Remove from oven and enjoy!