Spaghetti Squash with Garlic Butter

Recipe originally found at Steamy Kitchen.

You'll need:

1 spaghetti squash
2 tbs butter
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup finely minced fresh herbs (optional)
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F.  Place your spaghetti squash on a baking sheet and bake for ~1 hour (mine took 1 hour and 10 minutes).  You'll know it's done when you can easily pierce the skin with a sharp knife with little resistance.  Set the squash aside to cool for 10 minutes or so.

Cut the squash in half, lenghtwise.  Use a fork or spoon to remove the seeds and other membranes.  Discard them.  Continue using your fork to scrape the squash to get long strands that resemble spaghetti noodles.  If your squash is proving difficult to scrape out, put it back in the oven for 10 minutes or so.

Look at those squashy strands!

Heat a large sautee pan and melt the butter.  Add the garlic and sautee over medium-low heat for a minute or so.  Once the garlic is fragrant, add your strands of spaghetti squash, salt, and herbs if you're using them.  Add the cheese, and then taste to make sure you don't need more salt.

You can cook for a couple minutes more, or just eat it as is, depending upon your preference for the texture.  Cooking it for a bit longer will obviously make it a bit softer.  It has a bit of a crunch to it to begin with.

Using some fresh herbs would have made it a lot prettier by adding a nice pop of color, and would certainly have imparted some more flavor.  Unfortunately, my herbs bit the dust this past week.  The parsley and chives wilted and couldn't be revived, and the basil started turning brown.  Can I get a moment of silence?  This is a very sad thing indeed.  Oddly enough, my cherry tomato plant is still thriving!  I've gotten more cherry tomatoes off of it in the past few weeks (I wish I had taken pictures.  I had TONS!) than I got pretty much all summer.

This made for a nice, relatively low calorie, albeit interesting side dish.  Since it was just Sean and myself eating dinner, I only ended up using half of the squash.  Those things actually have a lot inside of them!  But you can obviously use as much squash as you need/want to.  Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to use up the other half...