Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Autumnal Adventures! Lasagna Cake and other Creations

Happy fall everyone! It's officially here! The weather is getting cooler. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are back. (Hooray!) Magazines are displaying pictures of women in boots, and I've already seen three girls rocking out crochet hats. And of course, every store is filled with Halloween candy.

I'll admit, I used to not be a big fan of the fall. Even though my birthday is in October, and I love Halloween, and my boots, and PSLs, and jeans, I don't love the eerie looking squash and pumpkins that have started showing up at grocery stores and farmers' markets.

Well, I didn't love them. But my mission is to start! And I can already feel the sparks flying.

The main reason I didn't like these freakish gourds was because I had no idea what to do with them. Pumpkin pie can be made with canned pumpkin pie filling. But what's that goopy mess inside the pumpkin used for? And what about those seeds? And what about that hard shell of the spaghetti squash? Do you wash it? Do you cut it? Do you take a sledgehammer to the rind? (I contemplated that before I simply asked Roy to use his manly power to cut all of them open for me.)

Anyway, everyone has to start somewhere. I used to not know how to cook anything. (Well, unless you count adding water to the fill-line of the microwavable mac n cheese containers...) So I thought, surely I can figure out how to master the butternut squash, the pumpkin, the spaghetti squash, and all those other weird bumpy circular heavy things invading the grocery aisles.

I started with the spaghetti squash and have made two different meal varieties following recipes I found on Pinterest. The first was a Spaghetti Squash Au Gratin with Caramelized Onions I thought would be like mac n cheese. I'll say it's less like mac and more like cheesy hash. Nevertheless, the recipe ROCKED. I took it to a family dinner and it was quickly gobbled down, so it's a winner.

I had to take a bite... then realized I had to take a picture!

The second time I tried spaghetti squash, I followed most of the recipe from the aforementioned Au Gratin recipe, but instead of adding cheese and Greek Yogurt, I topped the spaghetti squash with some Bertolli spaghetti sauce and chopped up some leftover chicken sausages we had from a pool party the night before. Then I baked this "casserole" for half an hour at 375° and topped it with some mozzarella cheese. Roy loved it, and said he still couldn't come to terms he was eating a new vegetable that he liked. Roy's almost 15-year-old picky-eater teenaged son, David, gobbled down half of the entire tray that I made. He even came up with a name for it: Lasagna Cake. I'll take it. (Note: I didn't tell David he was eating spaghetti squash instead of actual pasta. Some things are better left unsaid...)

So here is the recipe for...

Lasagna Cake

1 medium spaghetti squash

1 medium onion, diced

2 TBSbutter


2 cloves garlic, minced


1/2 tsp salt (+/- to taste)

1/2 tsp black pepper


1 cup your favorite spaghetti sauce (homemade or store bought)
1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
1 TBS olive oil 
2 tsp oregano
2 tsp thyme



Preheat oven to 375°

Cut squash lengthwise. Scrape out the seeds. Salt the flesh of the squash and wipe some olive oil on it. Grab baking dish and add enough water to cover the bottom of the dish. Place spaghetti squash face-down. Bake for 45 minutes. 
While squash is baking, caramelize onions and garlic with butter. Add salt and black pepper. Remove from heat once onions are light brown. Remove from heat and set aside.
Once squash is done baking, remove from oven and let cool down a few minutes so you can handle it while scraping the flesh. Add spaghetti squash 'noodles' to an oven-safe casserole dish. Spread out caramelized onions and garlic on top. Add tomato sauce and cheese and mix up to spread sauce evenly. Top with oregano and thyme. 
Put Lasagna Cake back into the oven for 30 minutes. After that, remove from oven, let cool slightly, and enjoy!
Lasagna Cake!
As for those weird seeds you'll find in all sorts of squashes, you can do what I did with them. First, remove all the weird stringy madness from around the seeds. This may be a little bit time consuming, because the seeds are super slippery, but work through it to get all the seeds untangled, and then wash them. Pat them dry with a paper towel, and then put the seeds in a baking tin and spray with oil. I used truffle oil. We have one of those spritzy sprayers that provide a more uniformed coating of oil. (I use it when I make popcorn too!) You can find them anywhere, and I bought ours for 10 bucks at TJ Maxx. If you don't have a sprayer, just coat the seeds anyway you can in the oil of your choice, and then salt them before popping the baking tin in the oven for 15 minutes at 400°. If you're like me and you like really toasted brown seeds, leave them in for longer, but first shuffle the seeds around so they're not just toasting on one side. Once they're done, enjoy! I eat the seed whole, without taking off the shell. I don't think there are any problems with that, but you do as you wish. 

My goal is to go on Pinterest and find more recipes that are autumnal. One such recipe is the
Turkey, Wild Rice, Apple, and Cranberry Stuffed Pumpkins but I might skip out on the wild rice and just use turkey, apples and cranberries. Maybe I'll substitute spaghetti squash for the rice! I haven't yet decided but it's on my autumn food bucket list!

What autumn veggies have you used so far? Lemme know about it!

Til next time

-Kale Queen

2 comments:

  1. Was just checking out your blog! Love it! This looks yummy! :)

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    1. Thanks Angela! I'm happy to share yummy healthy recipes with friends and family (and strangers!) so I started this blog after I lost weight. A lot of people ask me what I eat to maintain my weight and I'm happy to inform them it's not cardboard flavored wheat bran lol. Happy reading!

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