Spaghetti Squash

I love to try new things and tend to do things on a whim (remember The Coconut Fiasco of 2008?).  So last year when I read about this interesting thing called a spaghetti squash in the Kraft Foods magazine, I was intrigued.

However, I didn’t run out and by it then because there were other recipes I was trying at the time and then I forgot about it. 

Fast forward to last week.  I was in Publix admiring those cute little baby pumpkins (they are oh.so.cute! but what do you do with them?!) when I spotted this:

On sale for $.79/lb even!  So I scooped one up and took it home to experiment with.

As I do whenever I undertake anything new, I consulted Youtube. 

Yes, it’s my Go To website for information. 

Weird, yet surprisingly effective. 

I found a couple of videos that were helpful and got to work on mine.

Rayna was my enthusiastic helper

Cutting it in half was really hard, so I ended up nuking it for 5 mins in the microwave.

fresh out of the oven

separating the insides from the skin

up close, you can see the stringy pieces which look kinda like noodles, hence the name, spaghetti squash

 

My verdict:  Great substitute for diabetics and people watching calories/carbs.  Of course I prefer actual noodles, but this wasn’t bad at all.

 

What’s great about this is it’s good with just salt and butter or you can fancy it up with a gourmet recipe. 

 

I tried this three ways.  Salt, butter and parmesan cheese.  Spaghetti sauce and parmesan cheese.  And finally butter and brown sugar.  They were all pretty tasty.

 

Two things though:  If you don’t cook it long enough the “noodles” tend to be a bit crunchy.  It needs to bake at least an hour.  You definitely will want to microwave it first to soften the skin enough to cut through.  Unless you have a very good knife and strong hubby to cut it for you. 

My strong hubby was in the middle of an intense workout and since I’ve cut myself too many times with my super sharp Pampered Chef knife, I didn’t want to risk it.

If you try this let me know!  Or if you have any recipes you love to use that feature this particular gourd, pass it on!