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.

Related on EcoSalon
Spaghetti Squash Pizza Recipe
17 Must-Try Butternut Squash Recipes for Fall
Butternut Squash Coconut Curry

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

Seventeen butternut squash recipes you’ll want to explore, from sweet to savory.

It’s butternut season! Everyone rejoice, because your favorite, buttery, nutty squash is all over the place, and that means you need tasty and delicious butternut squash recipes at your fingertips.

Why are butternut squash recipes so popular? Maybe it’s because of its gorgeous color, or like other squashes, that it works just as well for savory as it does for sweet ones. Whatever it is, there’s nothing wrong with eating a little more butternut, especially during the fall harvest season.

Butternut squash has high levels of vitamin A and C as well as folate, and it has been reported to help with everything from arthritis to the health of your lungs, so eat up. Here are 17 mouth-watering butternut squash recipes to put on your fall cooking list:

1. Butternut Squash Coconut Curry

Half tropical, half seasonal, this butternut squash recipe is a creative twist on the classic soup.

2. Spicy Butternut Squash and Black Bean Burger

Looking for butternut squash recipes you can eat without a spoon? This vegetarian burger is a hefty hand-food that will please the biggest appetites.

3. Butternut Squash Tart with Fried Sage

While sage and butternut are a common pairing in butternut squash recipes, frying the sage puts a fun twist on this savory tart.

4. Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Stew

This vegan dish is the perfect thing for when there’s an autumn storm brewing and all you want to do is curl up and eat comfort food.

5. Stuffed Butternut Squash with Quinoa

The unique shape of a butternut squash makes it perfect for stuffing. In this dish quinoa and black olives bring out the squash’s natural, earthy flavor.

6. Spicy Squash Salad

Unlike some roasted butternut squash recipes, this salad can hold its own as a side or as a main dish.

7. Mushroom, Butternut Squash and Gruyère Tart

You can never go wrong with a savory tart this time of year, and with the addition of gruyère cheese you’ll impress anyone at the table.

8. Spiced Butternut and Quinoa Muffins

Who says butternut squash recipes are only for dinner? Two classically savory ingredients come together in a sweet muffin that will pair well with a morning cup of coffee or tea.

9. Butternut Squash Tacos

Butternut squash and chipotle powder in corn tortillas. Enough said.

10. Gingered Butternut Squash Pie

Forget pumpkin, this should be the new go-to dessert among your butternut squash recipes.

11. Grain-free Butternut Flatbread

This “bread” made from butternut squash can be used for everything from sandwich bread to pizza crusts.

12. Curried Butternut Squash Fries

Of all the butternut squash recipes, this may be the most tempting: make fries at home and ensure that they’re healthy.

13. Black Bean and Butternut Squash Burritos

Find your favorite whole wheat tortilla and wrap up this easy vegan meal.

14. Butternut Cinnamon Rolls

While you may never have thought to put squash in your cinnamon rolls, you’ll soon wonder why you never had. Gluten-free and vegan as well.

15. Butternut Squash Fritters

A healthy appetizer that’s made with chickpea flour.

16. Butternut Squash with Quinoa, Feta, Mint and Basil

Mint and basil give this dish a fresh spin.

17. Cinnamon Vanilla Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds

Dessert? Appetizer? Does it matter? Make a couple of batches to ensure you have enough to last.

Related on EcoSalon:

17 Vegan Halloween Recipes

50 Awesome Soup Recipes for Fall

Image: Quinn Dombrowski, woodleywonderworks

The post 17 Must-Try Butternut Squash Recipes For Fall appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnSuddenly, sweet potato fries don’t seem so bad.

Heard of butternut squash? Of course you have. I don’t know how one couldn’t, what with it being whipped into some not-your-average-squash creation in every organic, hipster and farm-to-table restaurant these days. Fitzgerald, were he around today, would have surely noted this celebrated starch; the butternut even has its own website.

It’s ravioli. It’s risotto. It’s sauce. It’s bread. It’s pie. It’s fries. It’s roasted, toasted, baked, braised, glazed, and available conveniently cubed at the grocer. Somewhere, someone has named her offspring after this thing that is not a yam. I don’t know if it’s made it into candles and body scrubs because I haven’t been to the beauty aisle in a while – what with being busy tracking down squash recipes and all – but I can only imagine what’s going on over there given what’s going on online.

Last week, I walked over to grab coffee at one of my favorite bakeries when I saw it: a gluten-free, vegan, butternut squash cupcake.

I momentarily paused before whipping out my phone to document this disaster in proper 2.0 style – I do hate to be that girl, but hey, I was already in a vegan gluten-free bakery. I snapped a semi-blurry photo and shared it with the world. Foodies, there’s a new cupcake in town, and it’s called butternut squash. The ubiquitous squash is precariously close to verging into beet, goat cheese and walnut salad territory. Or sliders. Or olive oil in desserts.

What about the acorn? Why aren’t we seeing roasted acorn squash fries on every brew pub menu? Or delicata? Even the name is refined – “I’ll take a glass of bubbly and some delicata, please” – and the cooking opportunities are equally endless.

Butternut is delicious, and totally versatile, which is wonderful, but we foodies may wish to observe a moment of gustatory introspection (as opposed to the more standard routines of navel-gazing, porn, and drool-tweets) and remind ourselves that we’re talking about a squash. A squash.

On that note, I’m off to eat lunch, with a nice bowl of one of my favorite dishes from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking, Chunky Lentil Soup, full of healthy lentils and two whole cups of diced…butternut squash.

You just can’t win them all.

Editor’s note: This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s weekly column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, discovering what’s new and different in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: theilr, Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Give It Up, Butternut appeared first on EcoSalon.

It’s that time of the year already – when gardeners sneak up onto friend’s porches and leave bags of summer squash before ringing the doorbell and running – hey, it happens.

As it happened in my little garden, every plant I put in the ground died except for two (yes two!) squash plants. Now, keep in mind, I live alone, and there is a trumpet vine right near the vegetable bed, which the bees really love. I’m happy about the pollination, but these babies are a little too prolific. Nobody who lives alone really needs two squash plants. Trust me. In the space of one day, the tiny squashes turned into monsters and suddenly I was harvesting about five a day. Help!

Cutting the squash into coins and sauteing it for a side dish is a cute idea, but it’s not really going to work for me. How many times a day can I eat squash? So, the theme this week is recipes that use up lots and lots of squash.

Anytime you have to shred a squash, you know you’re going to go through several of them. Here’s a recipe from Food Blogga that is an interesting twist on the usual zucchini bread. A savory version that sounds yum.

Soup is always a good bet because you know you’re going to need to cut up more than one or two of those babies to make a pot of soup. I made something similar to this recipe from 101 Cookbooks the other day. My version included yellow squash instead of green and I garnished mine with a swirl of crème fraîche and a spoonful of basil pesto.

Back to the ever handy shredding method. This recipe from How the Cookie Crumbles is one I will return to again and again this summer. The other day a friend and I demolished at least eight squash this way and it only served three people. And that’s exactly what you want this time of year.

Image: clayirving

The post Feeling Squashed? 3 Tasty Recipes to Use Up the Abundance appeared first on EcoSalon.

They’re already talking about their costumes, those candy-crazy girls of mine. That’s how I know fall is here, just a wink and a nod after packing them up for summer camp.

Design-wise, it’s one of the easiest seasons for stylists since it involves scavenging for leaves and twigs to tweak our vignettes for free. Ah, there’s that “F” word, again, a favorite at EcoSalon.

Want to spruce up your rooms for autumn without much of a budget? Take one of the following paths most traveled by the frugal M. Stewarts among us:

The Centerpiece: Leaf it Alone

The Toast and Tables blog gathers no moss but plenty of leaves for centerpieces (images below). The simplicity is enticing. You can also make your own wreath with bundles, or layer them along the mantle to be set aglow by beeswax candles.

The DIY Twiggy Cabinet Door from Apartment Therapy

Bring the outdoors in by assembling twigs to embellish the typical cupboard cabinet (image below).

Basket Cases for Giving Thanks to the Autumn Bounty

Most of us have a caterer’s supply of baskets stored in the house. Fill a few with aromatic apples, Indian corn, leaves, pumpkins and other colorful objects for a cornucopia of delights. Don’t forget to toast your pumpkin seeds and put them in a bowl on the coffee table for another tasty treat of fall.

Scatter Bowls of Fall Potpourri with Old Fashioned Living’s Blend of Earthy Balsam Scents

Collect dried leaves and flowers from the ground, blend with fragrant oils and make your own yummy potpourri. Follow the DIY recipe and bring the woods and celebration of the equinox into your nest.

Image: J. Charpentier

Felt Leaf Napkin Rings and Placecards for Your Fall Dinner Party

Design Sponge has the skinny on these orange and brown napkin rings and cards (images below), easy to make with felt, scissors, glue, buttons, thread and your imagination. I love the chic, homemade texture of these festive gems.

Main Image: Design Sponge

The post Harvest the Feel of Fall in Your Home for (Practically) Free appeared first on EcoSalon.