Roasted Butternut Squash, Chicken, and Quinoa Stew

I typically am not one to rave about a food item that is "healthy", but this is the exception.  This soup is healthy, hearty, and great for cold rainy or snowy days.  A combination of squash, tomatoes, olives, black beans, and quinoa (pronounced keen-wa...I think...makes me sound like a ninja)  provides for a healthy dinnertime option the whole family will enjoy.  Takes 4-6 hours in crock pot, or can be made on the stove top.

Ingredients:

32 oz chicken broth

2-3 chicken breasts, boiled/shredded

1 diced onion

1 can diced tomatoes, not drained

1 can black beans, drained

3/4 cups black olives, sliced in half or quartered, drained

1/2 teas salt

4 cloves garlic, minced.

2 tsp oregano

2 tsp parsley

2/3 cup uncooked Quinoa (found by rice aisle..)

1 butternut squash (1-2 lbs)

Instructions: 

First things first, you need to steam your squash until it is tender enough to cube.  So what I did, and I am no expert on this matter since I did end up screwing it up, was I cut it in half (be careful, squash has been known to take some fingers...) and lay it face up on a cookie sheet, see picture.  Scoop out the guts and discard...or eat, if that is your kind of thing.  Place in the oven at 350* for about 10-45 minutes (or until you get impatient and take it out...but seriously, make sure it is tender enough to cut up...).  Other methods include sticking the whole thing in the oven for some time so it is easier.  OR you could just buy the frozen cubed butternut squash that some grocery stores sell and save some frustrations. :-D

In the meantime, you can combine the remaining ingredients into your stockpot or crock pot.  Plop all of the ingredients into the crockpot in no particular order EXCEPT EXCEPT the quinoa.  That will be added last.  So, that means the broth, the chicken, diced onion, salt, garlic, oregano, tomatoes, olives, beans, and parsley.

When the squash process is done, you need to CUBE one half of the squash and MASH the other half....Scoop out one half, place it in a shallow dish and use a potato masher, doesn't have to be perfect.  See pictures. 

When you have added the squash to the soup, you need to then add that fancy quinoa.  

Mix it well, the quinoa won't look like much but don't you fret....its time will come!

What I did, was place this in the crock pot at 7:45 am on LOW...I got home at 3:45 and checked it, it was super super thick, which was fine with me, however some people don't like that.  So, my recommendation would be to either, A: add the quinoa half way through (say, on your noon lunch break), or B: Start the crock pot at lunch time to be ready by dinner time, or C: Just cook it up on the stove top, there really isn't a reason that this needs to go in the crockpot, but it probably helped my squash become softer.

Enjoy!!