Pork Chops with Maple Apple Acorn Squash Recipe

Ugly Vegetables Need Love Too

By Meg Jones – wife, mother, professional, contributor

Here’s my first post from Salt Lake City, Utah on how to prepare pork chops with maple, apple, acorn squash. A few months ago, our younger daughter introduced us to Misfits Market.  If you’re not familiar, as I wasn’t, the company describes itself as

“… a subscription box of sometimes funny-looking, always delicious produce, designed to break the cycle of food waste. Think of us like an online grocery store, except one that specializes in rescuing food that is unnecessarily thrown away. We source high-quality organic produce that has a few quirks—onions that are too small, potatoes that are shaped like your favorite celebrity, and carrots that fell in love and got twisted together. It may sound like a joke, but billions of pounds of this fresh and delicious food is tossed each year because grocery stores only want “perfect” foods on their shelves. We step in and buy this food from hundreds of farms across the country and bring them to your doorstep, saving you money and helping you save the world.”

We’re all about saving the world one veggie at a time, so we signed up for a weekly delivery.  And it has proved its worth in no time. 

We always have fresh vegetables in the house that we have chosen from a list of options, meaning I’m not a risk of running out of onions, potatoes or avocados which I seem to use daily.  We get the opportunity to buy vegetables we might not normally think to use, like parsnips, lacinto kale or golden beets.  

And we always have enough ingredients to pull together a tasty, healthy meal, sometimes requiring a little creativity and always giving us the pleasure of working with quirky ingredients that would otherwise have hit the dumpster.

When it became clear that our daughter would be spending another semester studying remotely rather than on campus in LA county, we all agreed that a change of venue was in order.  So she has taken up residence in Utah and is awaiting the arrival of three college friends who will join her for the next few months. 

While she is an opportunivore, her friends range from vegan to pescatarian.  When she discovered that Misfits Market added Salt Lake City to its distribution locations, it seemed like a good idea to switch the subscription to Utah and let them play around with various produce options since they will be cooking for themselves. 

The first Utah-bound box arrived before we did, and I didn’t even remember what I had ordered.  When I opened it, the usual suspects tumbled out and were quickly used (onion, potato, avocado) as per above); we were left with acorn squash, kale, a granny smith apple, and one remaining onion. 

Since we only had a week or so before the non-meat-eating cohort arrived, we thought it would be good to slip in some boneless pork chops now.  We typed our ingredients into google and adapted a recipe from Whole Foods that is a variation on a pork and applesauce theme.  It turned out to be superb with the added benefit of being pretty simple to prepare.

First we halved the acorn squash and roasted cut-side down for about 30 minutes at 350°F.  We had the option of convection roast so we went with that and found that the squash cooked a bit faster than anticipated. 

During that time, we diced one large granny smith apple, cored but with the peel left on, and sauteed it in butter, maple syrup and cinnamon, with an applesauce aim.  We flipped the acorn squash over on the roasting pan and filled each cavity with a scoop of the apple mixture.  These went back in the oven for another 25 minutes.

At that point, we sauteed the pork chops in olive oil over medium high heat, about 3 minutes per side until they reached an internal temperature of about 165°F.   While the pork rested, we added a pat of butter to the pan and sliced and sauteed our onion. 

After about 10 minutes over medium heat, we threw in the lacinto kale that we had shredded and cooked this mixture until it was soft.  We served each pork chop topped with the onion/kale saute with an acorn squash on the side. 

We all ended up scooping out the acorn squash, mashing it with the apple mixture, and combining it with the pork and veggies on each forkful.  I think we were all surprised at how well it turned out and agreed that this could easily become a winter go-to. 

Give it a try, and if you don’t have kale, you can add other leafy green vegetables or even herbs like thyme.  Enjoy!

 

 

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