With all this cold weather recently, aren’t you craving something warm? Maybe something Italian? How about a healthy alternative for spaghetti made from winter squash?

Winter squash (aka spaghetti squash) is dramatically lower in calories than traditional pasta noodles. How much lower, you ask? Try 40 calories per cup of spaghetti squash vs. 190 calories per cup for traditional pasta! You can see how it would be easy to eat too many calories when the spaghetti is so dense.

Spaghetti squash also is a great source of vitamins and nutrients. It’s very dense with vitamin A, C, magnesium, dietary fiber, and a great source for antioxidants like beta-carotene. Beta-carotene is essential because it prevents cholesterol build up and regulates blood sugar.

Just a side note about blood sugar: Traditional pasta noodles raise your blood sugar (glucose in the blood stream). If your blood sugar gets too high from eating refined flour,  in simple terms, it’s stored in the body as fat. That’s why you need to be careful with traditional noodles…it can stay on your hips and mid section!

My version of spaghetti is very simple to make,  and the sqaush, like traditional pasta noodles, will absorb all the flavors of the pasta sauce you combine it with. The noodles will keep the great Italian flavors of the sauce and the texture is similar enough to pasta noodles. You probably won’t even notice the difference!  Well maybe a little difference.

To get started, cut your squash in half, dig the seeds out (but not the underlying “noodles”), bake upside down in a pan at 350º for about 30-45 minutes. To make sure it’s cooked, take a knife and try to pierce the shell, if it goes through smoothly, the squash is ready.

Let it cool down a bit and then scrape out the guts from the wall. It comes apart easily into stringy pieces, just like spaghetti noodles. Just scoop them into a bowl and you’re ready to add the spaghetti sauce.

A note on spaghetti sauces: You can use store bought sauce, but be careful to make sure there’s no high fructose corn syrup or tons of sugar in the ingredient list. I have found a few store bought sauces without sugar but it was tough.  It tastes jsut as great without sugar!  There’s no reason to put sugar in a savory dish like spaghetti sauce! If you want a quick and easy way to make your own sauce, just sauté onions, garlic, tomatoes, salt and basil with a little olive oil and you’re ready to go.

All that’s left is to add your sauce to the noodles and mix…you’re done!

You can eat several cups of this and most likely be full before you over eat on calories.

Now you can enjoy this calorie-friendly and delicious alternative spaghetti!

Kardena Pauza,
Author of Easy Veggie Meal Plans, a 90 day vegetarian weight loss system