Butternut Squash & Trader Joe's Everything But the Sesame Seasoned Turkey Meatloaf

Inspiration for this butternut squash & Trader Joe's everything but the sesame seasoning came from one of my favorite order in dishes in Chicago is the Turkey Neatloaf from Beatrix I've never tried recreating it and while this version wasn't quite the same, it was a really good starting point and I'll be making this one again very soon.

It was half planned/half made up on the spot. I knew I wanted to make turkey meatloaf and I knew I wanted to try using the new Trader Joe's Everything But the Bagel Sesame Seasoning.

The Beatrix version has large chunks of sweet potato on it and in hindsight a lot of rosemary which could have been a nice addition (generally speaking I think I needed some other spice or herb, but more on that in a minute...).

I also knew I wanted it to be moist and full of veggies, so while at TJ's I grabbed a bag of pre-chopped butternut squash which I ended up dicing into smaller pieces and I remembered that I had a bag of already diced celery in the freezer from a few weeks ago when I was making tuna salad all week at lunchtime.

So without further ado, here are the deets:

What I used:

1lb ground turkey thigh
2 eggs (beat)
generous palmful of everything bagel seasoning
handful each of diced butternut squash & celery

How to:

Sauté the butternut squash & celery until brown on the edges and soft.
Place the sautéed in the fridge to cool down
Mix the turkey, seasoning, eggs, and veggies in a large bowl
Place in a meatloaf dish and bake in the oven at 375 for 35 minutes, then turn up the heat to 400 for about 10-15 minutes, and finally put on broil for about 3 minutes to brown the top. I did drain off some of the liquid on the top, eyeball it.

NOTES:

I probably could have used a pound and a half of turkey, however it was super duper moist and not dry at all which I think was due to the meat to egg ratio. It was enough to serve two adults with 1 slice left over
While it was perfectly tasty it could have used something else, another herb or seasoning perhaps. OR as Beatrix does, serve it with a great sauce like their vegetarian gravy. Next time I'll work on that.
In terms of the butternut squash bag, I used about 1/4 - 2/3 of it for the meatloaf and then roasted the rest for my lunch time salads this week. I did dice the large pieces up to be pretty small
Despite the picture below showing sweet potatoes, I ended up serving it up with roasted regular little potatoes and charred broccolini. YUM!