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So, the other day, on a whim, I was in the little Country Fresh Produce Market that I prowl on the regular and happened upon a spaghetti squash. I like regular squash, and acorn squash works nicely in many autumn recipes, and I even like butternut squash in Butternut Squash Apple Cider Soup (as long as it’s from The Cookery in Door County not my own frightening concoction, because that was a fail of epic proportions). I’d read somewhere that spaghetti squash is often used as an alternative to pasta noodles for diabetics or other people who are watching their weight and/or carb intakes.

So I bought the little guy.

At the very least, I thought, my dear friend Katie, who has a toddler with severe food allergies and has become a master chef at whipping up healthy, tasty meals using alternative ingredients, would be able to shine some light on what I could do with it, if I got stumped.

So home it came.

And I searched some recipes until I found two that appealed to me.

I waited until I had a night when Ted was working late and would, upon his return home, be gleeful that I did not subject him to the perils of trying sometime new and healthy.

And I made Spaghetti Squash Au Gratin and Spaghetti Squash with Pizza Basil.

I cut the sucker in half using a pick ax (well, just about), gutted the seeds, and put it in a covered microwave safe dish for 10 minutes with 1/4″ of water in the bottom. It cooked up beautifully. I then used a fork to remove the little spaghetti strings of squash flesh from the shell and put half in two separate bowls.

In the first bowl, the Spaghetti Squash Au Gratin, I mixed light sour cream, light 2% shredded cheddar cheese, light butter and cooked onion slivers, red pepper flakes, thyme, salt, and pepper in with the spaghetti squash.

In the second bowl, the Spaghetti Squash with Pizza Basil, I mixed pizza sauce, 2% pizza cheese, a freshly diced garlic clove, and a handful of cut basil ribbons from my basil plant in with the spaghetti squash.

I put both dishes, uncovered, in a 375° oven for 15 minutes.

The Au Gratin was good, but the Pizza Basil was out of this world awesome.

I’d make it again in a heartbeat. Healthy, low carb, light, easy to make, and really really good…..a winner!

I’ve also been a fan of making zucchini pizzas in the oven this week, which are also healthy, low carb, light, and easy to make. I make them with zucchini slices, 2% pizza cheese, pizza sauce, light turkey mini pepperoni’s, and black olive slices.

In other news, last night Ted and I went to see BAMM at CCM. BAMM is the moving light show that the lighting students do as sort of a final project in the moving light programming class. It’s super awesome. All these hugely expensive moving lights are donated to them for use in BAMM by one of the big name lighting companies and each student in the class programs the lighting for two songs – one of their choice and one of their professor’s choice. They have all these awesome lights which can do a million, trillion different colors, patterns, shapes, and angles and more, and the hazer machine fills the room with a nice subtle fog for effect, and the music plays and the lights twirl and it’s like being at a concert…except these kids are, like, sophomores in college. It’s pretty phenomenal to see what can be done with moving lights and little programming talent! Lots of fun!

Also, the boys at CCM that made that incredible pixel-mapping video for the ETC (Electronic Theatre Controls) contest to win their school a free lighting console….you know, the one I posted on my blog and begged you all to watch their video and go vote for them because they worked so hard and did a really fantastic job?

They won 2nd place out of all the entries in the country!

And the school who won 1st place didn’t choose the best best lighting board for their prize…instead they wisely chose the light board which would actually serve their purposes and work best for them at their college instead of just taking home the best one out there that they don’t even have enough equipment to support. Smart.

Which means that the CCM boys got to take home the best best one…the Eos. The Eos is a $40,000-$70,000 light board, depending on which one you get…it’s the kind that is used in major Broadway houses. And they won that sucker for their school so that they have something real and awesome and modern to use and learn and practice on before they get out there in the real world and have to use it.

Sweet, right?