Seasonal is the new black.

Everywhere you look and everything you hear is all about eating and cooking farm to table, with what’s fresh and in season. Add to this foodie phenom a plethora of fall squash—not just your everyday butternut or spaghetti—and I’m seeing some serious foodie cravings.

It seems that there’s a bigger demand for recipes that include non-run-of-the-mill varietals and cooks who are ready to experiment with easy recipes, like these two that I found in my tweet feed within minutes of one another for Kabocha squash: Pistachio-Dusted Kabocha Squash from Turntable Kitchen  and La Fuji Mama’s Simmered Kabocha Squash in Miso.

I’m squashing my squash craving (doh!) with this recipe I whipped up thanks to some gourds and pasilla peppers pulled from the garden before the first frost. It makes for a super easy party with friends.

These are the steps: Make it, heat it and serve it.

No last minute fuss, throw out a few bowls, some sliced baguette for dipping and you have time to sip a glass and visit with guests—the antithesis of my normal party-prep frenzy. I’m thinking the recipes was a success, given that I had 3 people asking for it.

The recipe includes both roasted butternut squash—yum, buttery, earthy—and roasted pasilla peppers. If you’re a pepper roasting novice, check out this video for how to tips.

So without further ado, I present to you a few more turkey (and a veg option) squash chili recipes…we all love the slurpy.

photo > Just a Taste 

Served in kid-friendly mugs—a great party tip—Kelly ‘pumps’ up (doh!) the more trad version of chili with pumpkin puree and tosses in a little sweetness from a secret ingredient (hello Campbell’s) in Just a Taste’s Pumpkin Turkey Chili.

 photo > Dinner With Julie

Julie adds a curry-like sweetness to a de riguer chili recipe by adding carrot, coconut milk and squash, and puts in the crockpot for a super easy meal in Dinner With Julie’s Crockpot Turkey Chili with Apples and Squash.

photo > Coconut and Lime 

 If I were a squash and got to choose my own name, it’d be a thumb war to choose between Delicta or Dumpling (sorry acorn and zucchini.) Coconut and Lime’s Sweet Dumpling and Delicta Squash Chili has a few extra ingredients that contribute to its depth—savor the smokey hints thanks to Worcestershire sauce, hot paprika and liquid smoke—but once you get them together, it’s a simple one pot dump and go recipe.

photo > Cookie & Kate 

Okay, okay, so sweet potatoes aren’t squash, but they are orange, right? Kate’s veg friendly recipe for Cookie & Kate’s Sweet Potato Chili rings true to favorite chili cookin’ recipe ingredients—minus the texas requirement of beef only—and adds a shot of cocoa powder to the mix to elevate the solid flavors.

And if you’re like me and love searching for Turkey day inspiration, follow the Pinterest Seasonal Thanksgiving inspiration board that Becky from The Vintage Mixer put together for a few of us UT bloggers to contrib too. Addicting I tell you.

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Tagged as: beans, butternut squash, chili, pasilla peppers, recipe, sage, seasonal, turkey