Today is National Pasta Day, and—inspired by the example of Her Majesty the pasta-banning Queen Elizabeth II —I come to you with the zeal of the newly converted to encourage you all to eat zoodles instead.
Much to my surprise, zoodles—zucchini noodles, for the uninitiated—are great, it turns out!
I was given a spiralizer as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago. You use this plastic gizmo to grind whatever—sweet potatoes, beets, yellow squash, zucchini—into noodles, and I duly used it to jazz up my sautéed zucchini. Which was great! But it eventually occurred to me—while staring at a pile of uneaten zoodles that was entirely too big for a side dish—that that I could probably dump some tomato sauce on top and I really would enjoy it just as much as if it had been whatever angel hair was on sale at the grocery store that day.
So I did some googling and found this “cheesy baked zucchini casserole,” which—come to find out—is incredible. The important part is the recipe encourages you to first drain, then squeeze your zoodles, so you don’t get a watery mess, which I’m given to understand is the primary concern with zoodles. Leftovers are great, and I am very confident that the servings I froze will be just as good one random Tuesday afternoon in three weeks when I realize that if I cannot stand the idea of going to the grocery store.
Make no mistake—I love pasta, and I would be perfectly happy to eat pasta every two to three meals for the rest of my life. But, again, like Queen Elizabeth II, I am not as young as I used to be and I need all the nutritional help I can get. Maybe you just love leafy greens and would happily eat them all day long, but I am not Peter Rabbit, and sometimes, like a toddler, my vegetables need to hide tucked inside something that is lasagna-adjacent. What do I care if zoodles are more typically the province of very intense mommy bloggers with vastly more free time than I have, and also very intense YouTube recipe influencers? Even a broken clock made of zoodles is right twice a day!
As yet another, more seasonally appropriate alternative, next week I’m going to try this spaghetti squash casserole. “Spaghetti” is right there in the name! I’m a casserole bitch now! I love it!! Down with pasta!!!