The Fall of the Squash

Recently mom and I were watching The Food Network and we saw a Chef preparing Acorn Squash. "What's that?" my mom asked. "Have you ever had Acorn Squash?"  

And no, I had never had Acorn Squash so we said next time we went grocery shopping we would pick one up, and we did.

We were going to make it the way we saw on the Food Network in a dish called Acorn Squash Agrodolce. Argodolce is Italian for Sour/Sweet.

Their recipe started out with cutting the acorn squash in half then scooping out the seeds then slicing it into 1 inch slices. Which I did, easy-peasy! 

Then you toss with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place on a baking sheet and roast about 30 minutes. Then it said to remove the peel. 

Well, I did all of the above but when it came out of the oven I tasted it with the peel as other websites said you can eat the peel and O.M.Goodness!!! It was so delicious. I almost ate the whole thing right then and there. Mom loved it too and she's a very picky eater.

Here you see a few slices that I had with my dinner that night, alongside some coleslaw and some cubed Parmesan crusted pork chop.

The rest of the recipe called for the agrodolce, which sounds terrific but it's very high in carbs due to sugar content. It calls for red wine vinegar as the Agro (Sour) and Dolce (Sweet) in the form of dried currants or raisins and honey. Also some crush red pepper, fresh mint and salted almonds. You can find the complete recipe HERE.

After I had eaten my fill of Acorn Squash I had to log it in to my food tracker which I will share more about in another post. 

Turns out that Acorn Squash is pretty high in carbs. Which makes sense because it was so delicious. 1 cup cooked has 30 carbs, then you minus the dietary fiber and you end up with 21 net carbs. Again, too high when you stick with 20 to 24 carbs per day. 

However I can eat a slice here and there once in a while. It is very low in saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium. It's a great source of Vitamin A, Thiamin, Vitamin B6 and Magnesium and Dietary Fiber, Potassium, Manganese and Vitamin C.

Photo Credit - Nutritiondata.self.com

Have you ever had Acorn Squash? What other squashes would you recommend? I think this fall I am going to try different ones. A friend of mine recommended I try Carnival and Kabocha Squash, so I'm on the hunt for those.

~~~Alicia

One New Thing a Week Starting Today and Who Doesn't Love Bacon? Bacon Jalapeno Deviled Eggs

Loving my low-carb lifestyle, it's become a way of life, not just a diet. But noticed I've been getting lazy and having the same old thing. I've just been eating rotisserie chicken in salad or just alone. Last week I made Kale Salad and I loved it and realized that there are so many other low carb dishes out there and I set a goal to try at least one new recipe per week; more if I'm feeling ambitious, but at least one!

Maybe I'll even try to start up my Weekly Low Carb Wrap Up again...we'll see, baby steps here, it's summer and hot!

I get a lot of suggestions on things to make from my sister Lisa and my co-worker Angelica. Lisa recently sent me a recipe for Bacon Jalapeno Deviled Eggs from the blog Real Housemoms. You can follow the link to find the original recipe. I had to tweak it a bit to make sure that my people would eat it. Some don't like jalapeno, some don't like paprika, some don't like mustard and so on and so on...

Started by boiling a dozen eggs. I got a really great tip this weekend from Anne Burrell from the Food Network. I happened to catch an episode where she made Truffled Deviled Eggs and she said she had a foolproof way of boiling her eggs that would make them perfectly fluffy every time and you will never have that green ring around the yolk! Eggs should be two colors, yellow and white! The secret? Place your eggs in a pot, fill with tap water, BTB...bring to boil.  When they boil turn off the burner and cover for exactly 13 minutes and Voila! Perfect eggs!

While I was boiling the  perfect 13 minute egg, I fried my bacon. Is there anything prettier than bacon frying in a pan? Is there anything on this earth that smells better? Ok, well yes, babies smell better, love that baby smell...but you CAN'T eat a baby! Check this out!

Bacon Frying! Yum - Muy Bonito, Que No?

While the eggs are boiling and the bacon is frying, I'm chopping Jalapenos! I'm the Queen of Multi-Tasking! I diced them really small so that I would get a bit of Jalapeno in every bite! Love raw Jalapeno, I put it in salads and omelette's and almost anything that needs a little crunch. It takes the place of potato chips for me. The recipe called for two, but I had a really big one so I just diced up the one. I seeded it first to take out some of the spiciness.

Also Muy Bonito! Green...my fav color!

So eggs were done, ran them under cold water to cool them off so I could peel them. Peeled them, cut them in half, removed the yoke and placed the yolk in a separate bowl and sure enough, beautifully yellow! Forgot to take a picture, but you'll see how yellow my final pictures are below.

I made my egg yolks a bit more simple than the recipe, just mayonnaise, a tad of salt as the bacon would add it's own saltiness, some black pepper about a half teaspoon of regular yellow mustard, not the powdered kind, just the one you put on your hot dogs.

The one thing I did try from the recipe is to add some sugar, I thought maybe it would offset the saltiness of the bacon and you know what? It did! It really added something to it. I only used maybe one quarter teaspoon. Added the bacon and mixed. I didn't add the jalapeno yet as I wanted to make half without jalapeno.

Now in the recipe you place the egg mixture in a plastic bag with a piping tip and pipe them in all nice and pretty but you know what? It's over 100 degrees outside and spending additional time in a warm kitchen when I could be eating in front of the air conditioner was just not in the cards today, so I spooned them in instead.

Here's the bacon only ones that I made. I think they still look rather pretty, even without the piping. The recipe called for a sprinkle of Paprika, but again...my people are not big fans of the Paprika and I think mine was old anyway as it was more brown than a rusty red color, so I tossed it.

Huevos (Eggs) without the Jalapeno!

Here are the ones I really thought tasted much better, but that's because I'm partial to that Jalapeno and the crunchiness! They were delicious!

Mmmm, all that's missing is an ice cold beer!

I only used 6 slices of bacon so with the rest I made BLT sandwiches. Of course I didn't have the BLT as it's not low carb with the bread, but I did enjoy sprinkling my portion of bacon on top of the eggs. Yum!

So technically, this is the one new thing for the week, so I don't have to worry about making anything new this week, but you never know because I know that Lisa and Angelica will be sending me yummy recipes to try! Have a great week everyone!