Pad Squash

I am a newcomer to the world of spaghetti squash. It is a mystical food that looks like a big yellow egg, but turns into spaghetti when you slice it in half and cook it. How cool is that?? I ALSO recently discovered Pad Woon Sen, which is all the deliciousness of Pad Thai with some skinny bean thing instead of noodles. In honor of these two Good Foods, I present to you: Pad Squash. I sort of loosely based it off a paleo-diet pad thai recipe (Paleo Pad Thai recipe)

It’s a little more complicated than most of my recipes but super super worth it.

– a spaghetti squash
– a bunch of veggies (i used edamame, red pell pepper, broccoli, snap peas, and onion. carrots and water chestnuts would also be outrageously good.)
– sauce (i made my own by mixing a bunch of stuff together, i’ll put it at the bottom.)
– peanuts
– 2 eggs

1) make the spaghetti squash. lightly grease a cookie sheet. heat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit (or 325, if your oven is inexplicably 25 degrees hotter than what you set it to). cut the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out all the goop, and place squash-side down on the cookie sheet. cook for 30 min.

2) in the meantime, get out a skillet and crack the two eggs into it. scramble the eggs in the pan. you could scramble in a bowl then add to the pan, but i really don’t taste a difference and this way saves you cleaning a bowl. #nodishwasher. cook eggs like you would a pancake, once scrambled (aka cook til one side’s well set and maybe browning a little; flip, repeat.)

3) cut your egg pancake into little squares. chop up veggies into your favorite size of veggie chunks.

scrape that squash into noodles. aw yeah.

4) take the squash out of oven, assuming it’s done. if it’s not done, do something useful with your life. talk to your roommate. do some jumping jacks. try to remove the glass stuck to your counter with some combination of soda and alcohol. give up. realize time’s up and take the squash out of the oven. let it cool. Drag a big spoon against the flesh of the squash so it sort of falls out as noodles. seriously cool.

5) sauté the veggies in some olive oil. add the squash “noodles,” eggs, and sauce. cook ‘er all up, throw some peanuts on top and you have some delicious Pad Squash! Yum.

for the sauce:

– teriyaki sauce
– soy sauce
– garlic paste
– peanut butter
– lemon juice
– a clementine
– cayenne pepper
– ground cumin

1) squeeze the clementine juice into a bowl, mix everything up, microwave it so the peanut butter melts, mix it all up again. all of these ingredients are optional, you can really combine whatever you have slash like. earlier this week i made spaghetti squash with balsamic vinaigrette  pesto, marinara sauce and garlic paste. also a delicious combination.

yum yum yum!

Rating: Brachiosaurus

Why is this good?Because it tastes flipping amazing! And it’s two or three serving of nutrient-dense veggies, and it’s full of protein from surprising places. There’s the peanut butter in the sauce (surprise!), the edamame in the veggies (surprise!) and the egg-pancake (not-so-surprising). You could also add tofu or meat to amp up the protein.

Any downsides? all that soy sauce probably makes for a pretty high sodium content. but you could play around with different sauces. and frankly, i’m not too concerned about sodium as a human who doesn’t ever eat fast food and rarely eats processed food.

I’m thinking about it now, and this might be off the chain with some pineapple added to the veggies. Hmmmmm. better keep cooking!