First try at spaghetti squash

Well, these things last forever, luckily.  I bought a spaghetti squash a couple of weeks ago and didn't do anything with it.  I got another one shopping on Tuesday (I ended up leaving with 6 kinds of squash... I may have a problem) just in case the older one wasn't good anymore.  So... I'll just save that for later!

I made another recipe from How it All Vegan - Stuffed Spaghetti Squash.  Yum! 


(PS- they just bleeped out 'the f word' on Dr. Phil.  Not the actual word.  "the f word")

So I wrestled with the squash for a bit to cut it open. These things are such a pain to cut. The recipe said to scoop out the seeds and leave the flesh.  Seeds out, check.  I had no idea about the stringy stuff... was that the spaghetti-like part of the squash?  Or... is that like any other squash and you scrape that out, too?  And when does it start to look like spaghetti? I had never even tasted this stuff before, why did I try to cook it?

I left some of the junk in just in cast that was the actual spaghetti stuff.

The filling also contained something that I haven't really cooked before (though I had eaten them), lentils.  Yet another ingredient that had been sitting my cabinet for a while. This picture is really just because I love my nesting measuring cups.  So cute.

Anyhow- here is the finished product.  I loved it!  My boyfriend, as it turns out, not such a fan of spaghetti squash itself, but liked the stuffing a lot.  Also- I should have scraped out all of that stringy stuff.  It was easy enough to just kind of get rid of it, but, ya know, for next time.

New (to me) food

TVP

I've had a bag of TVP sitting in my pantry for months.  I felt like I saw 5094343 recipes in my books that used it, so when I saw it at Market Basket (whaaaat? no really) I bought a bag and thought I'd figure it out.  Turns out there was one recipe and so it sat.


I finally decided to use it last night in some Vegan Sloppy Joes from the fabulous book, How it All Vegan!  I've been happy with everything I've tried in this book.  I realize that I've never had non-vegan sloppy joes, so I can't say it's better or worse or just like, but they were good! 

I didn't have all of the ingredients I needed (no tomato paste) and made some substitutions, so the sauce was probably not quite right, but still yummy.  They were the prettiest things I've ever made, but what can you do.
Made some cajuned sweet potato over "fries" on the side.  One thing- I was in a bit of a hurry to get to rehearsal, so I had to eat quickly.  A smoking hot sloppy joe is a terrible thing to eat quickly... mouth and throat- burned. Ouch.