Veganspired: Surprise! Romantic Acorn Squash

So I have this other vegan book. It's got a cookbook section, but it's mostly a guide to living as a vegan. It's called

The Vegan Girl's Guide To Life by Melisser Elliot.

So in this book, there's a recipe that really piqued my interest.

Apple Sage Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash Pg 166

I decided to make it apple sage quinoa because I freaking love quinoa and I had a huge bag of it from when I went to the co-op and bought it on sale. :-]

So here's what you need for this deliciousness:

quinoa (or rice), powdered sage, salt, pepper, dried cranberries, raw hazelnuts (yum!), diced celery, chopped shallots, chopped apple, olive oil, and some GLORIOUS ACORN SQUASH.

Now, the actual recipe calls for ingredients for 4 servings, but I didn't want to buy TWO acorn squashes because I only want to make a serving for myself...so I got enough ingredients for two servings (each serving is half an acorn squash).

Alas, acorn squash is super-fun to play with. When you cut it in half, it looks like little orange hearts full of seeds and stringy crap!

Which leads me to explain the title of my blog post. While making this dish, I realized that it would be a perfect romantic dinner. A) the squash is shaped like hearts, B) the meal is so pretty looking, C) It has all kinds of pretty little flavors like hazelnuts and cranberries and squash.

Anyways, I made this little romantic dinner alone in my apartment and kinda got mopey about the fact that I was ALONE WITH TWO HEART-SHAPED SQUASH HALVES. Hahahahaha.

So, moving on with the recipe. You then throw the celery, apple, shallots, and spices into a pan and freaking sautee them with the olive oil.

I have to say, I didn't really like the smell of the sage cooking with the apples. I think it's a personal preference...but still. Smelled odd. I got nervous.

So then you throw in the cranberries and hazelnuts! Yeah!

So while all this is happening, you're supposed to have the two squash halves baking in a 450 degree oven for like 30 minutes. (They get SUPER shiny after this, I don't know why....)

So when everything's done cooking, you throw the quinoa-pile (or rice-pile) into the squash. Then you cover it in tin foil and bake it for 10 minutes. When it's done, it should look like this: