This four-cheese garlic spaghetti squash recipe is a low-carb alternative to regular alfredo pasta.

This spaghetti squash recipe is relatively foolproof, in both preparation and taste. I mean, what could possibly go wrong when tons of garlic, heavy cream, and cheese come together and adorn one of fall’s favorite vegetable? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not only are the flavors on point but also the presentation is quite impressive. The spaghetti squash cooks, sliced side upward, cradling the spices, cream, and cheeses. Once fully cooked, a gentle scraping of a fork across the surface of the spaghetti squash reveals tender strands of “spaghetti”. While you scrape away at the squash, the strands mix into the other add-ins, creating a sumptuously aromatic, and a decadent seasonal pasta experience, only without all the calories and carbs (at least from the pasta itself).

Spaghetti Squash vs. Regular White Flour Spaghetti

Spaghetti squash is a winter squash with a mild flavor that, unlike many other squash varieties, isn’t very sweet. The squash fills in for regular spaghetti pasta but with an added crunch and much lower carbohydrate profile. In a 100-gram portion of both regular white spaghetti pasta and spaghetti squash, there are 31 grams and 7 grams of carbohydrates, respectively. Spaghetti squash also has much fewer calories, with 27 calories to regular spaghetti’s 158 calories per 100 gram serving.

Spaghetti squash is a good source of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, vitamin B6, and iron.

What You’ll Need

When choosing a spaghetti squash, look for one that is about eight to nine inches long and four to five inches in diameter. Smaller squashes can sometimes lack flavor while larger ones may have developed too many fibers that make them too tough to consume.

Once you find the right size, hold the squash and make sure that it is hard and free of any soft spots. Your spaghetti squash of choice should have an even, pale yellow color. Any green spots would indicate an immature squash.

Truth be told, at the end of the day, the real focus here isn’t so much the spaghetti – it’s the sauce. The squash helps to add bulk and fill up the tummy, but the true flavor comes from the garlic and four cheeses.

The four cheeses in this recipe are Gorgonzola (or a mild blue cheese), fontina, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and Pecorino Romano. This recipe isn’t married to this particular combination of cheeses, so feel free to use other varieties, such as Asiago, mozzarella, provolone, cheddar, and more.

Four Cheese Garlic Spaghetti Squash Recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients

• 1 spaghetti squash
• 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground pepper
• 5 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 cup heavy cream
• Fresh thyme
• 1/2 tablespoon chives, finely chopped
• 1 cup mixture of grated Gorgonzola (or a mild blue cheese), fontina, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and Pecorino Romano

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut the spaghetti squash in half, lengthwise and use a spoon to take out its seeds and pulp.

Place the spaghetti squash halves on a baking sheet with its sliced side upright. Season with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, mix together the garlic, heavy cream, water, and chives.

Sprinkle half of the grated cheese evenly between the cavities of the two halves. Top each with an equal amounts of the heavy cream mixture and then with the remaining cheese.

Place the baking sheet in the oven to bake for 45 minutes, or until the spaghetti squash is tender and the cheese has melted and has turned lightly brown.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and let the spaghetti squash sit for five to 10 minutes before serving.

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The post Four-Cheese Garlic Spaghetti Squash: Low Carb, High Satisfaction appeared first on EcoSalon.

An exclusive EcoSalon playlist for your next night of hosting. 

Throwing a dinner party? Or need inspiration for getting some friends together for an evening of good food and drink? This playlist should do the trick.

Check out the music videos for some of the songs below, or instead of clicking play every time one music video ends and you need to start the next, go even further ahead and listen to all of them nonstop on our 10 Songs for a Dinner Party playlist on 8tracks.

1. Beyond the Sea – Bobby Darin

2. On an evening in Roma – Dean Martin

3. Oh Marie – Louis Prima

4. Man Smart (Women Smarter) – Harry Belafonte

5. Witchcraft – Frank Sinatra

6. Lady Luck – Richard Swift

7. Postcards From Italy – Beirut

8. A History of Lovers – Calexico & Iron & Wine

9. Let Me Come On Home – Otis Redding

10. Polk Salad Annie – Elvis Presley

Like this playlist? There’s more where that came from. Check out our full 10 Songs series.

Images: Jenny Downing

The post 10 Songs for a Dinner Party appeared first on EcoSalon.

Stayed home on Black Friday? Good. Here are some gifts you can buy for the comfort of your own home.

Our favorite eco-retailer, VivaTerra, is having a fantastic holiday sale, just in time for dressing your house up in seasonal, original  fun. These five gems are all 50% off, so you’re within your rights to buy two – one as a gift and, ahem (whisper), one for yourself.

With bijou desserts still all the rage, this branch pedestal server ($87) will display your mini-puds to dramatic effect. Designed as a little tree, it has two levels  – one large and one small – with a butterfly delicately perched on the edge of the upper tray. Besides, we’ve been lusting after it for a while.

Finding a unique holder for those table essentials is always a challenge, which is why we love this chirpy bird salt and pepper set ($12). Their shape is smooth and tactile, with a tiny beak and graceful body – they dispense through a discreet opening on their heads. We like their subtle color distinction.

We’re always on the lookout for new ways to present cheese. This ingenious puzzle board ($29) will make your fromage serving both fun and fabulous.

Having limited kitchen space myself, an all-in-one tower which performs no less than five functions is a winner. This minimalist white ceramic tea tower ($27) features storage and presentation for your teapot, tea cup, saucer, sugar and cream.

These glass numbers are designed to echo familiar shapes: the carton ($12) for your cream and the sack ($14) for your sugar. The Milk carton creamer and sugar sack: perfect for the surrealist tea party.

Images: Andrew Warchy; VivaTerra

The post 50% Off and More from VivaTerra: The Kinder Way to Shop appeared first on EcoSalon.

After two decades of making dinner, I am finally ready to cook like a man.

The day my father died was the day my mother officially stopped cooking. From that point on, she might scramble an egg or make a tuna fish sandwich, but she would never again prepare what could be considered a proper meal, one with a protein, a starch and a vegetable. This was not a protest or a manifestation of extreme grief, it was merely her way of declaring a formal and definitive end to an era. She had put dinner on the table every night during the forty-one years of her marriage, and my father’s death provided a natural stopping point. She was, quite simply, done.

I am considerably younger than my mother was then, and my husband, thankfully, is very much alive. But I am feeling the first rebellious stirrings that I suspect will eventually lead me to hang up the pots and pans. After 25 years, I have been rendered sad and stupid by the grindingly repetitive nature of dinner, by the never-ending need to plan the evening meal, then shop for it and prepare it, night after night, year after year – a mind-numbing rotation of meat and side dishes that my family greets, more often than not, with an obnoxious chorus of  “chicken…again?” I am tired of having to remember who likes fish and who won’t eat red sauce, who will be home on Tuesday nights and who won’t. I am bone weary from it all, which is unfortunate, because I would actually enjoy cooking if I could do it as a lark, once in a while, with no pressure or expectations – which is exactly the way my husband cooks.

It may be a gross generalization, but I firmly believe that men and women approach dinner in entirely different ways. My husband cooks for fun – he tinkers with exotic and savory ingredients until he comes up with something novel and delectable. I, on the other hand, have cooked all these years in order to stave off starvation in the next generation of humans. I cook because otherwise children will die. This difference in approach leads to vastly different types of dinners: my husband’s meals are creative and beautiful while mine are grim and workmanlike. To put it in artistic terms, my husband’s cooking is like painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; mine is like slapping a coat of primer on the backyard shed.

To be fair, it’s not like my husband and I have a level playing field. Since I work at home, with flexible hours, I am the one who cooks on weekdays, when there is limited time to shop or study a recipe. I will very often throw something together using whatever is on hand – my default meal is slathering some Dijon mustard on a chicken breast and calling it a night. My husband, on the other hand, only cooks on weekends and holidays, when he can spend hours going over recipes, planning his menu, going to gourmet shops to find the perfect crimini mushrooms or his favorite brand of Asian fish sauce. He takes great care with his ingredients – when he makes chicken, he will rinse it thoroughly in cold water, then pat it gently dry before painstakingly plucking each individual bit of feather, and massaging tenderness into the meat. For a chicken, being prepared by my husband is like spending the day at Canyon Ranch.

My husband can afford to be meticulous, since the whole family is around on weekends, and he views us as a small and resentful staff of sous chefs. He will not hesitate to bellow for me or one of the kids to come and put up a pot of water or get him a paper towel, or find the butter. When I prepare the weekday meals I do it alone, cooking all the courses, making the salad, setting the table and cleaning as I go.

And despite the drudgery, the effort has been worth it, because all of those meals, prepared by a grumpy and indifferent cook, were eaten by a family that enjoyed sitting down together to talk about their day and bond over an overcooked piece of poultry. But my kids are grown now, and when my youngest child goes off to college next year, I plan to stop cooking, cold turkey (which is what we’ll have for dinner some nights, on rye bread with mayonnaise). I may cook for fun once in a while, but I am looking forward to following the matriarchal tradition of turning my kitchen into the appendix of the house: a useless, vestigial organ that I may have to get rid of if it starts to rot. Except for the oven, which I will continue to use the way my mom did – to store sweaters out of season.

Image: Kevindooley

The post The Sexual Politics of Dinner appeared first on EcoSalon.

As the evenings get longer and warmer, start thinking about planning spring and summer dinner parties that offer food for thought. Prepping an organic, locally sourced feast is a great way to get your dinner guests to enjoy a sustainable meal, but it’s also a green conversation starter, sparking lots of talk about food politics, green agricultural practices and even just the joy of food shopping at farmers market.

Pair your food with an equally conscious list of dinner party amenities. We’ve rounded up a few key items that will help you and your guests give back while enjoying each others’ company.

Wine

For those who enjoying sipping delicious, complex grape, having a few good bottles of wine on hand is a bonus for any successful dinner soiree, and Cellar Thief provides an excellent resource for finding the perfect bottle of vino while at the same time helping to bring clean water to those in need. For every bottle of wine sold, Cellar Thief works with charity : water to donate 100 days’ worth of clean water, and because they’re selling wines at a steal of a price, when there are only five cases left of a certain wine, if a customer buys all of them they’ll donate an additional 500 days’ worth of clean drinking water.

Need some help creating a menu based around your wines? Check out our 10 Green Wine and Food Pairings guide.

Plates and Glasses

Once you’ve planned the menu, you’ll need something to serve the food on and pour the drinks into. If you’re in need of a new table setting, Plates with Purpose is a creative option. The company produces a series of custom designed plates each representing a non-profit to which a percent of proceeds are donated. For drinks, you can go the recycled glass route. Green Glass Company has a variety of options that will not only give your table a distinct look, but also make for great parting gifts for your guests.

Dessert

Fresh fruit is always a simple, yet delicious option for dessert, especially when paired with a good dark chocolate. The staple of many chocolate lovers, Endangered Species Chocolate comes in a variety of milk and dark varieties and 10% of net profits are donated to support species, habitat and humanity.

Light

To maintain a romantic and inviting dinner party ambiance, lit candles are a must. But for the eco-friendly dinner party, avoid traditional candles made from paraffin, which is made from petroleum and releases harmful carcinogens when burned. Instead, choose beeswax or soy candles to light your table.

Beeswax is a completely renewable resource, and supporting smaller producers of beeswax candles also means that you’re helping the threatened bee population. Bluecorn Naturals sells both beeswax and soy candles, and at Candle Bee Farm you can purchase a variety of beeswax candles from a company that donates a percent of sales to non-profits, benefiting children and a variety of nature and wildlife causes.

Happy entertaining!

Photo Credits: The Arches, Derek Garvey, Green Glass Company, vegan feast, ItzaFineDay

The post Planning a Spring Dinner Party That Gives Back appeared first on EcoSalon.