Twice-Baked Spagetti Squash With Cashew Cheese Seed Mix and Fresh Cherries

This recipe has been adapted from the blog, The Vegan Word, so it’s now appropriately titled: Twice-Baked Spagetti Squash With Cashew Cheese, Hemp Seed Mix and Fresh Cherries

However, I found it in The New York Times: ‘Twice-Baked Butternut Squash With Cashew Cheese Walnuts and Fresh Cranberries‘ recipe:

(Basically, my version is two halves of a spaghetti squash baked twice so that during the second baking the mashed squash can be mixed in with the ‘cheese’ and speckled with cherries. It’s very colourful and festive looking. My partner and I spent Xmas alone without any family so it was great to have this meal to brighten things up (until I ate it, but I’ll get to that bit). I’m also finding that due to chronic digestive issues, food cooked for a long time seems to digest easier.)

The Vegan Word’s Cashew Cheese Ingredients

• 55 grams (1/2 cup) cashews
• 400 grams (1 lb) firm tofu
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder or 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 15 grams/4 tablespoons nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon tahini
• 1 teaspoon white miso

The Labyrinth’s modified cheese recipe goes like this:

• 55 grams (1/2 cup) cashews soaked in filtered water
• lemon juice and garden herbs to flavour

And here is the outcome:

Spagetti squash stuffed with rice, zucchini and hempseed mix, on a bed of rice. Cooked in pineapple juice, maple syrup and dulse flakes. #dulseflakes #spagettisquash #vegan #hempseed #foodallergies

A photo posted by Michellina (@michellinaoutofthelabyrinth) on Jan 23, 2016 at 11:45pm PST

For now, due to Environmental Controls not being implemented [read I can’t avoid mould or chemicals (to which I am sensitive to) exposure] I have to cook outside, and I can’t use the oven myself because the cooking fumes aggravate my ‘Allodynia’, which is the type of facial pain I get on the left side of my face, encompassing the nasal cavity, sinus, cheek and eye area. (Basically all fumes, even cooking or a hot car heating up, set this off. Hence, why I spend a lot of time in air-conditioned spaces.) I’ll try to do a post on how I work around this later…

So, to use the oven, I need Dan, my boyfriend, to man it—if I have to use the oven, forget it, I’ll just find another, less volatile way to cook: Steaming food is great!

We laid the already cooked spaghetti squash onto a bed of already cooked brown rice with some squeezed lemon, a jumble of Brussels sprouts and snow peas; we then drizzled maple syrup over the top, popped it back in the oven for the second cook and cleaned up while it was baking. We replaced the cranberries with fresh cherries.

What I liked, and valuably learnt from this recipe is that I can eat brown rice if it’s cooked double the time. The nutrition I’m sourcing from eating rice is not only keeping me sustained but also blowing my mind, energy wise. I’ve missed grains for so long that I’m so, so grateful to have them back in my life.

The awful part of this lunch was that as soon as the cashew cheese hit my stomach, I felt sick, which is weird because I am fine with a handle of raw cashews—this batch is not mould effected so it doesn’t make sense (Ha, like I have an illness that does, yeah?). It’s possible that I ate too much fat with this meal, who knows?

And the exhaustion of creating such a complex meal? I’ve promised myself that until I recover, I’ll only be making simple meals, baked one time, if not for a long time, only!

Kudos to my boyfriend for cooking for me throughout most of 2015 xo

Coming up

Guest Post from the one and only awesome Allergista!

More

The Vegan Word: Christmas/Thanksgiving Recipe from The Vegan Word: Twice-Baked Butternut Squash With Cashew Cheese, Walnuts and Cranberries

Phoenix Rising: A CFS model demonstrates mechanical allodynia and muscular hyperalgesia via spinal microglial activevation