Issue #49

 

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Please feel free to email me at tracy@cavemaneating.com with questions or ideas about this newsletter or about my two books, The Smart-Carb Guide to Eating Out: Fast-Food and Family Restaurants and The Dessert Diet.

Food Fix  

 

If you're trying to stay healthy and keep your weight down, you may have said "basta" to pasta.

 

But wait, not so fast...there's a healthy way to get your pasta fix. It's spaghetti squash!

 

Spaghetti squash is type of winter squash related to zucchinis, pumpkin and acorn squash. It's called spaghetti squash because when you cook it, the "flesh" (the part you eat) separates into strands that look like thin spaghetti.

 

The taste of spaghetti squash is delicious, a bit sweet and a bit starchy. My mom thinks it tastes like a potato. I think it tastes like acorn squash.

 

A spaghetti squash looks like a big yellow oval about the size of a football. You can find it in most grocery stores.

 

 

 

First, be sure to poke the top and sides of the squash about six times with a knife. Otherwise it may explode as you're cooking it. While this won't blow up your house, it wouldn't be fun to clean up.

 

Next, put the squash on a baking sheet or broiler pan to catch any juices (there may not be any, but just in case).

 

Then bake the squash at 350°F for an hour to an hour-and-a-half until the squash "gives" easily when you press on it.

 

 

 

When you take the squash out of the oven, handle it carefully because it will be hot. Use a knife to cut the squash in half. When you get to the hard stem, cut around it, not through it.

 

First you'll notice some seeds attached to some orange strands in the inside of the squash. Remove the seeds and set them in a single layer on the tray. You can eat the seeds as they are because they've already been cooked. Leave them out to dry and you can eat them whenever you want. While the shells are edible, they're a bit tough when eaten this way, so just eat the inner kernal.

 

The small orange strands that were attached to the seeds can be eaten, but they tend to be a bit tough so discard as much of them as you can.

 

Using a dinner spoon, scoop out the yellow flesh of the squash so that it separates from the thin skin. As you do this, you'll notice some of the flesh breaking into the thin strands. You can break the flesh up more once you've got it in the bowl. You'll find that all of it will break apart like spaghetti.

 

Now you should have a huge bowl of healthy "spaghetti" ready to eat.

 

 

 

Spaghetti squash is very low in carbs, similar to cauliflower. Four to five cups of spaghetti squash contains about as many carbs as one cup of pasta. Plus it's high in beta carotene (the yellow color is the beta carotene).

 

To eat all of this vitamin-rich goodness, I like to top a bowl of spaghetti squash with tomato sauce mixed with cooked ground turkey meat, making healthy "spaghetti and meat sauce."

 

You can also toss spaghetti squash with a little olive oil and garlic or prepare it just about any way you'd make pasta.

 

One squash makes a very large bowl of spaghetti, so you should have plenty of leftovers to play with.

 

 

 

 

Because the meals in Tracy's books are balanced based on Zone Diet principles, people who eat them are able to enjoy their favorite treats while staying slim and healthy.

Tracy regularly follows her own diets, dining at fast food restaurants like McDonald's and Burger King and eating meals from The Dessert Diet. Her favorite desserts are ice cream and chocolate.

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Past Newsletters

Issue 6
Issue 5
Issue 4
Issue 3
Issue 2
Issue 1 - Welcome

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Please email feedback and questions to: tracy@cavemaneating.com.

To learn more about my books, please visit: www.CavemanEating.com.