Crazy Concoctions
Well, this semester is flying by and I’m as busy as ever. Sometimes when I get stressed, I start to think about food as an outlet. Actually, I think about anything that doesn’t involve what I should be focusing on, but I digress. I have been brainstorming random food ideas, but I am very limited in resources these days, in that I grocery shop once every 1-2 weeks (buying mostly canned and frozen foods), limit my purchases to $30-45/trip, and I usually spend less than 10 minutes “cooking” any one meal. This makes for some very boring and repetitive meals (which largely explains why I stopped blogging daily meals a long time ago. ) Lucky for me, I was able to get some new items to shake things up recently and I’ve enjoyed the variety! I’m sharing some of the meals over the next few posts, just to keep things interesting 
First up: spaghetti squash. Not something that was on my list, but they were on sale for $0.69/lb, so I found a small one to try. When I got to the register, it rang up at $1.79/lb!! I asked the attendant about it and he ended up giving it to me for free! It also came with instructions, so I followed them by cutting it in half and baking it in a pan with some water for about an hour, then scraped out the “noodles”- they were really just like spaghetti!
I didn’t have any sauce, so I sautéed onions and mushrooms in some oil, then added spinach just until wilted and piled it in with the squash.
For something so simple, I loved this meal. But it might have something to do with my love of mushrooms. And spinach. And squash…
I was really excited about how much squash there was- after you scrape it into “noodle” form, there is a lot more than it looks in its compact form. Which seems obvious as I type this, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. Some of the cool nutrition facts about spaghetti squash are that it’s about 42 calories per cup (compare to actual spaghetti at 220 cals/cup) and is a source of Vitamin A/beta carotene, Vitamin C, folic acid, and potassium. Both Vitamins A and C may have antioxidant properties. Folic acid is known as a preventative for neural tube defects (which is why it is fortified in American grain products) and it is a component of one of my research projects- the amount in a mother’s diet may have an impact on the child’s cancer defenses! Stay tuned for updates on the research findings! (How’s that for a teaser 
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