It's Not Noodles...

it's SPAGHETTI SQUASH! Our vegetable of the week.

We are so incredibly blessed with amazing friends, a great church, and the wonderful moms of the school where Sophia will be starting Kindergarten next year (which is affiliated with our church) - they have provided us with meals for the past month and will continue through March, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Not having to cook and having awesomely yummy dishes delivered to our house has been a huge blessing! But it also means we've been eating a little less healthy than normal (can you say brownies three times a week? lots of yummy gooey cheesy casseroles?) So, on the days that I am cooking, I'm sticking to healthy vegetarian dishes - like spaghetti squash with a huge salad.

You should be able to find this large, pale yellow squash in your grocery store this time of year. It's low calorie and filling, and a good source of folic acid, potassium, and beta carotene. And it's COOL! Ha ha!

To cook it, just pierce (stab) it a few times with a fork, and then place in a preheated 375 degree oven for about an hour. Cut it in half and scoop out the seeds, and then place it back in the oven - cut side up - for another 15 minutes. Once it's cooked, you can use a fork to scoop our the "noodles" that are inside - that's the COOL part! You can substitute the "noodles" for spaghetti in any recipe, serving it with traditional spaghetti sauce or in a casserole.

But my favorite way of eating it - my nonrecipe - is to saute a sliced onion and 2-3 minced cloves of garlic in olive oil and then toss with the spaghetti squash and some freshly ground pepper and Parmesan cheese. The girls love it too - and between the four of us, we can put away a good sized squash in one sitting!