adventures in produce

vegetable confession: i've never cared too much for winter squash. i try butternut every year, but unless it's mixed with an equal portion of cheese in a ravioli or some such, i'm still not sold. same thing with sweet potatoes. isn't that sad? i like to make an effort to like new vegetables, however, so last night i picked up a spaghetti squash to see what i could make of it. quorn chicken was on sale, so i purchased up a box of fake breasts. hey, they're not packaged in plastic. (ha ha?) the box has several serving suggestions, one of which was chicken parmesan. "gosh, box," i thought to myself, "that's actually not a bad idea. you're a lot more helpful than most boxes." come on - who's putting pimento smiles on triscuits? so: fake chicken parm with spaghetti squash. after a vigorous poking the squash went into a 425-degree oven for 40 minutes or so and came out soft. there's no real need to cut off the ends. i'm just dumb or something. after cutting in half, mine looked like so: hmm. seeds. what to do with the seeds? easy: scoop them out. there aren't very many, and there's plenty of squash down below. just scrape with a fork to separate the strands. it's easy, i promise. sure, things got a little messy, but only because i didn't really know what i was in for. just try not to drop seeds on the floor. they're slippery suckers. my fresh-fast tomato sauce was a little wet after adding the squash strands, but a little extra cooking might help. i made a really fast loaf of bread (thanks breadmaker, once again. you know what i like), and that sopped up the juice nicely.

one medium spaghetti squash made enough for two servings, seconds for my dear husband, and mixed with a little leftover penne and the rest of the mozzarella, plenty of lunch for both of us tomorrow.

we'll definitely do spaghetti squash again. i didn't fall in love with it, exactly, but there should be some tasty possibilities there. would i mistake it for pasta? no way, but it still works. and no carbohydrate guilt with the bread. you have to love that part.

*thanks to brian for being johnny-on-the-spot with the new camera-computer hookup! we love pictures!