Winter CSA Flies By

So far, from the farmer perspective, we are finding the Winter CSA to be pretty low key. The vegetables are doing nicely in storage. Just hanging out and waiting for us to pack them up and bring them to the members. The stress of wondering what the weather will do to us is over for the season and now we get to sit back and share the fruits of our labors.

Hopefully the members are enjoying things as much as we are :)

This week's fruits include the following: Brussels Sprouts, Onions, 5 lbs Carrots, 4 lbs Potatoes, Spaghetti Squash, 2 Honey Bear Acorn Squash and Dried Tomatoes.

This will be the last of the spaghetti squash and Brussels sprouts until next fall, so you should probably savor them. To help you with that task I have come up with a spaghetti squash twist on one of my old standby recipes. (Sesame Noodles is the twisted recipe, if you are wondering)

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I think it may be the best spaghetti squash recipe in the entire world.

I have a little spaghetti squash aside to get out of the way before I get to the recipe. I've been trying to determine whether I like roasting spaghetti squash whole or halved better. For this particular recipe, I went with whole. I made that choice for two reasons. 1. The internet would have me believe that roasting whole leads to longer, more noodle like squash strands and this recipe is one of those rare occasions in which I'm using spaghetti squash as a noodle stand in. 2. This recipe is meant to be made with cold spaghetti squash, and it seemed easier to stick a whole baked squash in the fridge than two halves.

I very carefully considered these two potential advantages when cooking this squash dish today, because I wanted to answer this question once and for all. (And because I don't have much stuff to carefully consider during the winter.)

I came to the conclusion that I prefer to halve the squash. The whole squash was much wetter than halved squash tends to be and I'm not really sure that the strands were of a noticeably different length. It was probably easier to stick into the fridge after cooking than two halves would have been, but it was a bother to separate the seeds from the good stuff which kind of balanced that out.

It's interesting to peel a whole baked spaghetti squash and it starts out promisingly tidy.
But once you start taking the innards out it turns into a smush of seeds and strands and messy fingers.
I don't care for messy fingers.

Now that that's settled. Here's the recipe.

Sesame Spaghetti Squash

• 1 spaghetti squash, baked until soft and cooled
• 2 carrots, peeled into long noodle like strips or shredded
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons peanut oil
• 1 Tablespoon soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon rice wine vinegar or white wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoons sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon sugar, or other sweetener of your choosing

Combine the spaghetti squash strands and carrot in a serving bowl and set aside.

Stir together the remaining ingredients with a fork until well combined. Pour the resulting sauce over the squash and carrots and stir to coat.

Then devour it. We ate all of ours up while we waited for the steelhead to
finish baking in the oven. It was really really good.