Pepperoni Pizza Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

    Well, I hate to gripe about the weather....again....but it started snowing again last night! It's official! Spring is NOT coming to Ontario this year! Sorry! With some luck we'll hopefully get summer, but I'm not holding out hope at this point! While doing the barn chores this morning, and getting the hay out for the horses from our last bale I thought, "well, crap! I guess I'm going to need to get more hay?!?!"  With the nice weather we had a few weeks ago I really thought we'd make it with the hay we had....but then the winter was like, "Psych! I'm cooooooming baaaaaack!". (insert weeping from this gal).

    Don't get me wrong, I like winter. But it's officially been spring now for 2 weeks, tomorrow is April, in 2 weeks it's Easter - so I want spring!!! I am saying that like a 3 year old having a temper tantrum!  

     Alright....move on Amy-Lyn....no amount of whining will change the weather.....

     Here at the Van Londersele house we like pizza. We like store bought, homemade, take-out (well, we rarely order take-out, but sometimes people come to visit for dinner, and they stop in town and grab a pizza or two). We'll eat sauce, cheese and pepperoni on baked potatoes, zucchini, and stuffed into chicken breasts. Because, let's be honest, tomato sauce, cheese and pepperoni together are soooo yummy, it hardly matters what they're hanging out with, it's ends up being delicious! 

     I recently have been trying to get my kids (aka-trick my kids) into eating more veggies. They are actually all pretty good about eating the veggies they like, which isn't a bad variety of veggies, but I want to be able to make less and less variations of dinner to suit us all. I'm not a make-8-different-kinds-of-dinner-to-suit-everyone kind of Mom by any means, but I do tend to make the family something to eat (it's always gluten-free), but because I eat mostly paleo, I'm the one with the adjusted meal. Yes, I am the picky child in our family scenario. Ok, I'm not picky at all, just specific. So, for instance, if we're having a pasta night, the kids will have gluten free pasta, and Adam and I will have spaghetti squash noodles, or some other veggie noodle (because I own a Inspiralizer and can make noodles out of anything!).

    Caleb, my eldest child who has autism is getting really, really good at trying new foods, but there are still a few he is very wary about. Spaghetti squash is one of those foods. But recently I'd made a casserole using spaghetti squash, and he ate it (he picked the broccoli out though). The casserole had a "cheese sauce", bacon and chicken though, so it was easy to get him to eat it. I'm not sure he even noticed it was spaghetti squash with how much he enjoyed the meats and "cheese".

    So, taking advantage of his enormous pre-teen appetite, and his love of meat and cheese, and the fact that he'd successfully eaten spaghetti squash without gagging, I thought this could be a good time to try something new and delicious. Pizza stuffed spaghetti squash! Yes indeed! 

      I will openly admit that he was reeeeeeealy skeptical, and wasn't into eating his "pizza" out of the squash shell (or the "squashes stinky coat" as he called it!), so I dumped it into a bowl, added another generous pinch of mozzarella, and a sprinkle of parmesan....and he ate it! I may have also bribed him with a treat if he finished it. I mean, sometimes, no amount of meat, cheese, or treat bribery will work to convince him to eat something new, so the fact that it did speaks to the tasty value of these pizzas! He did say when he was done, "Caleb will not like spaghetti squash" (it sounds like a question, but he was making a statement), and I said, "but you ate it all?", and he said nothing. In my Mom brain though I heard him say "drat".  : )  

     So, I'm not going to say "everyone will love this recipe!", but if your family already likes spaghetti squash then it's a no-brainer that you'll want to try this, but if your kids are on the fence, this may be the ticket to getting them on the spaghetti squash train! 

Pizza Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Ingredients:

• 1 Large Spaghetti Squash (or more, depending on how many you're feeding! You'll need one half per adult, and approx. one half per 2 children)
• 1 Cup pasta sauce (1/2  cup per each half-squash, so adjust if making more). I like to use President's Choice Tomatoes First with Basil sauce. Make sure you've chosen a suitable kind for whatever diet you're adapting to! 
• 1 Cup shredded mozzarella cheese (1/2 Cup per half squash, adjust if making more)
• 10 Pepperoni slices (5 per half, add or take away as you'd like!) Make sure you check the ingredients of the pepperoni if you are gluten free or Primal

Method: 

1. First, you'll need to bake the squash! Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Carefully cut the squash in half, length-wise. If you have a micro-wave, giving the squash a quick (5 minute) zap can help with the cutting in half. Place cut squash onto the prepared baking sheet and place into the oven
2. Roast the squash for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the skin is soft when you poke it
3. Remove the squash from the oven and carefully flip over.
4. Turn the oven to broil, and use a fork to gently scrap the squash into magical spaghetti-noodle-type strands! 
5. Fill each half squash with your sauce, then add half the cheese, your pepperoni, then the rest of your cheese. I like to do it this way because I don't like the pepperoni to get too crunchy!
6. Place the squash pizzas back into the oven to melt the cheese and get a nice toasty top! This'll take about 5 minutes, but keep your eye on the pizzas to get the tops just as you like them and to make sure they don't get torched! 
7. Once cheese is melty and delicious, remove squash from the oven and allow to cool for a minute before devouring! 

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      For a bunch more spaghetti squash ideas, check out this post from Buzzfeed!

      I blabbed too much at the beginning of this post, so all I will say now is have a great weekend! Bye!
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