Squashta Salad: a low carb alternative to pasta

Now that the weather is warming up, I’ve found myself craving picnic foods like crazy. One of my favorite picnic foods is pasta salad: it has a long fridge life and just gets better the longer it sits. And when I’m too lazy it’s too hot to actually cook something, pasta salad is a meal in itself.

But as things start to slowly move in the right direction for pregnancy, it’s more important than ever that I keep my blood sugar under control. Which means no pasta. Total bummer.

For the past few months, I’ve been swapping spaghetti squash for noodles in my regular pasta dishes, which has made for a fabulous middle-ground for me. It’s so close in resemblance that it doesn’t even bother me that Ben has a full bowl of regular noodles and I don’t.  And for me, that’s saying something.

So at the first early signs of springtime, I thought I’d try using squash instead of noodles in a cold preparation, which I’ve been calling Squashta Salad.

Even though it doesn’t look like more than a yellow oval (which honestly makes me think of the HEY Arnold nicktoon from the 90′s. Anyone remember that?), once spaghetti squash is cooked and scraped out of the rind, it is a pretty convincing replacement for noodles.

Never judge a vegetable by its cover. Or rind.

My favorite sort of recipes are the ones that don’t need an exact science to be delicious. This is that kind of recipe.

I remember reading somewhere that pasta salad is made up of four categories: pasta, mild flavors, bold flavors, and dressing.

There was more to the article about correctly balancing everything . . . but I’m a firm believer that math = exact science = not my kind of recipe.

My mild flavors were whatever veggies I had in the fridge that needed to be used up. Some of my cherry tomatoes were starting to get wrinkled, so they were definitely getting thrown in the mix. My bolder flavors were picked in the same fashion.

My veggies for this batch: one orange bell pepper, one cucumber, one carrot, and tomatoes. Nom.

Bolder flavors come from some Extra Sharp cheddar cheese and olives.

At this point, everything ended up in a big bowl with some Italian salad dressing. Couldn’t be easier. Or tastier. If lower carbs isn’t enough to convince you to try switching to squash, did I mention that this sat in my fridge for almost a week without getting soggy? Can your noodles do that?

Sog-free perfection in a bowl, baby.