Spaghetti Squash: the Easy Alternative to Pasta!
Mar 21, 2017
If you have been keeping up with The S File, you know that this is an exciting time for us. Ms. S. is busy writing her first book, and this time is particularly exciting for me, as I'll be getting married in less than two months! As you can imagine with only a few weeks to go, it seems as if my fiancé and I have never been busier.
Though my fiancé and I love to cook, our time limitations make it hard to eat well. To keep our health and nutrition on track for the big day, I've been searching for recipe options that are easy and don’t take much of our time. That’s why I was thrilled with my “new” culinary discovery of spaghetti squash as a substitute for pasta.
Abundant in potassium, but also containing vitamins A and C, phosphorous and magnesium, one cup of cooked spaghetti squash provides less calories, fat and carbohydrates than pasta, making it a great unprocessed alternative. While spaghetti squash certainly takes more time to cook, preparing it is almost as easy as making pasta.
Preparation
To start, I cut my squash in half, removed the seeds (which you can bake as you would pumpkin seeds) and added some salt, pepper and olive oil to the insides of the squash. I set both halves with the flesh side down on a baking sheet, and put it in an oven that I set to 375 degrees F. The recipes I found online predicted a 30 minute cooking time, but mine took about 45 minutes to cook. I periodically checked up on the squash, sticking a fork in the halves to see how they were coming along. When I could easily stick a fork into the squash, I knew it was done, and scooped out the insides with a fork. It was so easy!
To finish the dish, I added a simple homemade tomato sauce and kale to my squash, but you can use any sauce you like. It’s the perfect dish to make when you have ingredients in the kitchen to get rid of!
I will admit, the taste of spaghetti squash isn’t exactly the same as pasta (it has more of a nutty taste and a different texture) but it is close enough to fool my body when I'm craving pasta, and better yet - my fiancé loves it too!
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