Spaghetti squash

I was watching the Today Show a few days ago and the health food expert that was demonstrating how to prepare healthy alternative meals talked about spaghetti squash. She said that you can eat it just like regular spaghetti with pasta sauce, butter or anything else over the top that you'd like. After she said it was fun for kids to eat, I knew I had to try it because I'm a kid-at-heart.

Liz was excited because she said she had heard people at work talking about spaghetti squash. She didn't know what it meant and admittedly had never heard of spaghetti squash. We eat butternut and acorn squash regularly, especially in the fall, but neither of us had ever had spaghetti squash. That night, I went to the grocery store and purchased a spaghetti squash. I cooked it tonight and we had it for dinner.

There are two ways to prepare it. You can place it in some water and broil it for about 20 minutes or microwave it for about 10 minutes. I chose to microwave it. It looked like any other squash when I took it out of the microwave until I started scrapping it out with a fork. I couldn't believe it...it looked just like spaghetti! Whoever named it didn't need much creativity.

We tried some of it with pasta sauce and some with buttered rice. It worked great with the rice. I've made squash risotto many times, so I new the combination of rice and butter would be money, but the marinara didn't work very well.

It was definitely fun, but Isaiah wasn't interested in it at all. Left alone, it was very bland and had far less flavor than butternut or acorn squash. It didn't bother me, though. I thought it was a lot of fun and will make it again.

Lack of posts...

I'm making my second consecutive post apologizing for my lack of posts. I don't anticipate that I'm making my "followers" angry because those that do follow this blog understand that my summer months are quite different than those in the fall and winter in my world. Add to that the addition of another little Black a month ago and it goes without saying that experimenting in the kitchen has not been high on my priority list.

With that said, I'm starting to look forward to the change in the season soon. When the school year starts, so does my activity at work (Victory) and the weather begins to change. There is something about a brisk morning that gets me excited for cooking. Hot summer days almost do the opposite. I have created a few new recipes this summer, but we've eaten a lot of fresh vegetables (thanks to the Farmer's Market) and fruit plus done our fair share of grilling. We've also eaten a lot of pizza.

The one recipe that I recall from this summer that will be a mainstay in summers to come is a creative new cucumber salad. I made it once when Liz's parents were here and it was a hit. A few days later I made it for a picnic at my sister's house. It was a hit again. It contains cucumbers, garbanzo beans, tomatoes, minced onions and garlic with red wine vinager and olive oil and an abundance of fresh dill and grated peppercorns. I was "shooting from the hip," so I don't have an exact recipe for you, but throw it all in a bowl and try for yourself. It's a combination of ingredients that can't go wrong.

Oh yeah, another good one that I put together was edamame hummus. Yum.