"What is that?!" I said with weird disgust."It's a spaghetti quash." Explained my roommate.
"Why? Does it have spaghetti inside?!" Now I was getting excited.
"Well, no. It's a squash. But after you cook it, it looks like spaghetti."
"Oh. That's gross."
That was the end of that conversation a mere five years ago... until two weeks ago, when on a whim, I purchased a spaghetti squash from the super market. The scariest food purchase I've made, to date (I'm just not ready for beets yet).
What to do with this thing? Can I made it taste like spaghetti? Forget cooking it, how do I open it?!
My Facebook friends seemed to have a lot to say.
Some hate it, some love it. Some swear it tastes like spaghetti, some told me if I expect it to taste like spaghetti, I'll be disappointed. Some told me to bake it, some to microwave it, some to cut it first, some to cut it later. I became very confused. Then I became sick with a cold.
So the spaghetti squash sat patiently on the counter. Until last night.
Armed with a lot of how-to pictures, I preheated my oven to 400 degrees,
carefully and somewhat awkwardly sliced my squash in half,
scooped out the centers (like a pumpkin!),
placed both halves facedown in a baking dish with some water, covered them with foil, and cooked them for 40 minutes.
The sensation of being able to scrape the insides of the squash with a fork and have it come out like spaghetti was strangely satisfying. Dan got half a squash and I got half. Covered both with sauce and meatballs. The moment of truth.
-I tried something new and out of my comfort zone
-I found a VEGGIE that I would eat again
-I got Dan to try it with me
All wins in my book! Tell me, how do you like to prepare and eat your spaghetti squash?!
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