Cooking Mushaster

Mushaster? My new word for a mushy disaster. Insert sad face here.

Aaah, the weekend. It was a gorgeous one here. Mid 70's, blue sky and lots of sun. I had an unusually productive weekend, which always makes me feel good. We even got one of our trees trimmed. No, we're not freakishly early for Christmas decorating. Trimmed as in pruned. It was looking a wee bit shaggy. Ok, it was overgrown. Soon we weren't going to be able to see our house from the road, let alone walk down our sidewalk. I used my super secret connections and got it pruned for a mere $25. Score! Anyway, I digress....

Sunday rolled around, and like I said, it was gorgeous. Our friend Jenn came down to spend the afternoon with us. We chatted. We drank tea on the back deck. We watched Audrey proudly show us dead leaves she gathered. Then.... (insert Jaws soundtrack here) dinner happened.

You see, a few weeks ago, as I perused the Sunday paper, I found a recipe for "Spaghetti Squash with Vegetables and Bacon". I clipped it out, thinking to myself, "self, we're all trying to be healthy. Squash is healthy. Veggies are healthy. Bacon is just good. Let's try this". Jenn and James were enthusiastic sports and agree to try it out with me.

Enter mushaster. If you've ever had spaghetti squash, you know why it's named that. It comes out shaped like spaghetti, but has even less taste, if that's possible. Less taste and less filling (sounds like an ad for really, really bad beer). Add in a bit of broccoli, a few chopped romas, a bit of red pepper. Mix together, sprinkle on some crumbled bacon (turkey bacon, too). Mushaster. Mushy, gushy, veggie blah-ness. Jenn and I hesitantly tasted it before serving it, wary that it might be a tad bland. We were right. So she rifled through my rather extensive spice cabinet while I searched our door full of refrigerated condiments to see what we could add to redeem this dish. She added salt. I added butter. She added garlic. I added cheese. She added pepper. Still blah, but if you add too much, I suppose you run the risk of making it worse (is it possible?). So we sat down and invited James over. Enjoy the following conversation.

James: Gee, such positive comments, can't wait!
Suz: Yeah,...well,....we might order a pizza.
James takes a bite as Jenn douses hers with Siracha.
James: Wow, that is bland.
Jenn: And that's after we spiced it up!
James: Wait a second, this is the flavorful version?
Suz nearly blows spaghetti squash out her nose.
Suz: Yep, this is waaaaay better than before. I'm bummed, usually recipes from papers are decent.
James: This one? Some editor had to eat this at home and wanted everyone else to suffer too.
Suz/Jenn: Ha ha, maybe.
James: Mica, you want some scraped squash?

There was more to the conversation, but I just lost it at "scraped squash" and was laughing so hard. You know that laugh when you can't breath in, you can't breath out, and you just know you're turning beet red? That was me. "Scraped squash" just summed up the whole dinner.
Needless to say, Mica got the leftovers. She wasn't even too sure about it.

I have now bought, cooked, and eaten spaghetti squash. I don't see it in my near future. I'll stick to real spaghetti, please!