Butter Garlic Squash Pasta

Speaker 0 (00:00:00) - Hey, have you heard the worldwide streaming premiere of the acclaimed documentary film by Jake Remington? Frenchie Dreams of Hashish is April 29th, 2023. Frenchie Dreams of Hashish Showcases, master Hashish and Frenchie Cannolis, lifelong pursuit of perfect hash and highlights the ethos of sustainable sun-grown cannabis. And if you're in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, you can join me for a live screening of the film, along with other cannabis enthusiasts, not in Peterborough. No problem. You can find screenings all over the world, or you can buy the film on Vimeo on the 29th. But of course, movies and cannabis are always better with friends. Find details in the show notes at the bottom of your podcast player, and I hope to see you there.

Speaker 0 (00:00:56) - In this week's episode, we are doing a buttery garlic herb spaghetti squash pasta. Stay tuned. Welcome to Bite Me, the show about edibles where I help you take control of your high life. I'm your host and certified goe, Marge, and I love helping cooks make safe and effective edibles at home. I'm so glad you're here, and thank you for joining me today. All right, we're back. Thanks for joining me again this week, friends. And if you're new here, I am your host Marge. And I am a maven of edibles because they are my preferred way to consume cannabis. I do like to vaporize cannabis as well a lot of the times because it's that AVB that I like to collect. They already vaped by check. I use to make more edibles. So it all comes full circle. But if you are here for the first time, welcome and if you are a longtime listener, thank you.

Speaker 0 (00:01:47) - Your support means so much. And I am looking forward to getting into this week's episode, spaghetti squash Pasta. And no, it is not pasta made with some kind of vegetable-based noodle. It is actual pasta with spaghetti squash in it. Big distinction, not that I don't love a great plant-based meal. Actually, this is a plant-based meal. Now that I think about it. There is no meat in this particular dish, but it is easily infusible. But we'll get into all the details, all the nitty gritty about this recipe in just a second. Now, let me find my notes. We are going to be doing the cannabis fun fact of the week. In this particular one. I actually was just looking at my production schedule and I recorded this. You know, maybe not as early as I like to. Sometimes I like to have, uh, several episodes in the can, as we like to say in the biz.

Speaker 0 (00:02:38) - But sometimes I also get a little bit behind. But I realize that four 20 is coming up at the time of this recording, and I ought to do something to commemorate that. So this fun fact is near and dear to my heart because it is a Canada based fact. I am proud of my country and I'm very grateful that I was born in a place like Canada, that we enjoy many freedoms here and we enjoy legal cannabis as well. So I'm very grateful that I was fortunate enough to be born in Canada. The fun fact is, in 2003, Canada became the first country in the world to offer a medical marijuana program to pain suffering patients. And this fun fact came from dying to get high marijuana as medicine, a book printed in 2008, and written by Wendy Chaps and Richard Webb. And I just thought how wonderful it is that not only were we the second country to legalize recreational cannabis after Uruguay, but the first country in the world to have medical marijuana to pain suffering patients.

Speaker 0 (00:03:47) - And we all are familiar with the, the idea that cannabis can help many people in many different ways. Now, I feel like this could be a short episode today, but that's okay. There was a lot coming up in the world of bite me to show about edibles. Now, let's get into it, shall we? This week's recipe was a crowd pleaser. Yes, I served this, uh, at a family dinner actually, and it went faster than any other, the other dishes that I prepared. I made a lovely risotto. It was, well, a delicious Caesar kale salad that my daughter brought. I can't say I can't take any credit for that. She brought that from her restaurant and it was fabulous. Massaged kale with a Caesar dressing and nutritional yeast, which I have no clue really what nutritional yeast is. But boy doesn't make things taste cheesy. It's pretty great.

Speaker 0 (00:04:36) - But this buttery garlic herb spaghetti squash pasta was so good that people were going back for seconds and aas the risotto was laying waste in its pot just saying, please serve me. I mean, the risotto was good, but there was a bit of a flavor to it that even I was just like, what is that? And I admit that this is not something you should often do, but it was family. So I'm like, what the fuck? If you are having guests over for some kind of meal, trying out a recipe for the first time on unsuspecting people may not be your best course of action. You may want to serve something that is tried and true, that you're comfortable preparing so that you don't have any unexpected problems. Now, in my particular instance that people coming over were family, and you know what? I don't mind experimenting on my family.

Speaker 0 (00:05:26) - So there's that. Now, this one has been made more than once since because it was that good and it's so easy. And again, the infusing aspect of it is very simple, even as the recipe is written. So let's get into this recipe. It was pretty easy to make. It made a generous serving. Like I said, it was a crowd pleaser. The best part is, is that you infuse it at the end. So you can easily tailor the dose to each individual who's lucky enough to be sharing this meal with you. So you can dose it with either T H C C B D, a ratio of each, or leave it out altogether if you have some people who are not imbibing with you. Or you could also, you know, enjoy this at a certain dose and then have an infused dessert or perhaps infused coffee as well for an after.

Speaker 0 (00:06:19) - I love coffee after dinner, but I, I realized lately that I have to switch to decaf. Otherwise I'll be staring at the ceiling at three o'clock in the morning and I can't get back to sleep who's with me? Because I have made that mistake more than once. And it feels like it's been happening a lot more recently. I used to be one of these people who's like, I don't get affected by a caffeine. I could drink a cup of coffee right at 9:00 PM and still go to bed and sleep a full eight hours. But it seems recently, no, no, my body is rebelling against me and saying, Marge, you've enjoyed a free ride for long enough and now you cannot do this. So thank God for decaf. But the sky's the limit when it comes to infusing a meal like this. Now the recipe will likely require a trip to the grocery store, but there's nothing specialty about it.

Speaker 0 (00:07:01) - And honestly, my mouth is watering just thinking about it right now. So if you just hang on a second, I might go grab a snack. All right, I'm back. I'm putting this on the, on the menu again. I'm probably gonna be making this tonight for dinner because it was so good. But, and I feel like there's a lot of different ways you can modify it based on what you also have. So if you can't make it to the grocery store, you can do some kind of variation on this that that can also work if you're experimental. But it will probably be in the regular rotation from now until I die. I also happen to love pasta and I often opt for pastas that don't, or pasta dishes that don't have a red sauce. Not that I'm anything against having a red sauce, but there's something just so wonderful about a pasta with a drizzle of olive oil on it and some, some vegetables and some maybe a sprinkle of par or something like that.

Speaker 0 (00:07:49) - I mean, so why would you need to go to the grocery store? Probably for the spaghetti squash? I don't know. Too many people are like, oh yeah, I got that on hand. I mean, maybe you do, but I did not. So I had to make a trip to the grocery store. It also calls for a whole head of garlic, a whole small, whole head of garlic. You may not have a whole head, so you might need to go out and get that. You're going to need some butter chili flakes, parsley, fresh parsley, a mixed of G graded cheese. I used a parm and a sharp cheddar for this particular one. You need a pasta of your choice. I use linguini, but you could use whatever you want, whatever you have in your cupboard, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper. And of course, as it may not surprise you, you're going to need your infused olive oil as well.

Speaker 0 (00:08:35) - This is where the magic happens, of course. So for myself, when I picked up the Parmesan cheese, I picked up an aged three year Parmesan cheese cuz I thought, you know what, this feels fancy. There's not a ton of ingredients in this recipe, so why not go all out? It wasn't that much more expensive than the regular parm, but sometimes I feel like aged aged cheese just seems more abundant. So the sharp cheddar cheese as well was aged two years because I like cheese a lot and I do like it sharp. And interestingly, this cheese that I buy, I often buy this sharp cheddar. This sharp cheddar cheese has been aged two years because it's a little pricer than other cheeses. Yes, it's not orange because I have heard, and someone can correct me if I'm in, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but that a lot of those cheeses that are orange have been colored because obviously cheese comes from milk and milk is not orange.

Speaker 0 (00:09:28) - So it's been colored and colored with what, who really knows? I don't. So I like this cheddar cheese because it's, it's a white cheddar cheese. Age two years is quite sharp, it's salty. You don't need a lot for it to be enjoyed. So I can enjoy less of it. And it's one of the few cheeses I found on the mark that is made with un pasteurized milk. And I don't know why there's something about that that I really like, but there is so enough talk about cheese cuz I know not everybody's maybe a cheese lover. Unfortunately there's a lot of cheese in this recipe. I think it calls for one and a half to two cups. So if you're lactose intolerant, make sure you take your, your lactase pills or whatever it is you need to take beforehand. Cuz I suppose you could always skip it if you wanted, but I don't know.

Speaker 0 (00:10:17) - I don't know if it's quite the same without the cheese, you know. So the longest part about making this dish, as you can probably imagine, is that you need to roast the head of garlic and the squash ahead of time, which is pretty much hands off time once you've prepared it. I sliced the, the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise. I scooped out all of the stuff inside and I also had to cut the garlic in half lengthwise. You put those face down on a pan lined with on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and then when you put the garlic down, you would drizzle it with two tablespoons of olive oil. Don't use your infused olive oil here, just use your regular olive oil. And then you put this spaghetti squash over top cut side down all over top of the garlic calves. And the concept behind this is that the garlic would steam in the oven while it's roasting and would help get rid of most of the pun sea.

Speaker 0 (00:11:11) - So despite the fact that you're using quite a bit of garlic in this recipe, like ahead of garlic, it didn't have an overbearing garlicy flavor to it, which was really nice. And I wasn't, you know, hanging out with the fam afterwards when I served it at that dinner being like, whoa, garlic breath. You know what I mean? So don't worry about that. At least that wasn't my experience. It wasn't overly garlicy. And if you love garlic, maybe we're not afraid about that, but sometimes you, you don't wanna like walk around with garlic breath like you're trying to repel vampires or something like that for the rest of your evening. So that did work. So you roast it for 35 to 45 minutes, obviously until the spaghetti squash is cooked through fork tender. And then you set it aside because you're going to need to let it cool in order to handle it obviously, cuz you don't wanna burn those tender little fingers of yours.

Speaker 0 (00:12:05) - Now, meanwhile, what that's going on, I guess not. Meanwhile you kinda have to wait until afterwards. But once that has come outta the oven and you've set it aside, I, what I actually did is once it was cooled a little bit, I scooped out all of the spaghetti squash flesh and put it in a bowl, set it aside, and then I squeezed out the partially roasted garlic cloves into a little dish as well. Have that you can have that set aside and ready to go. So you're going to melt the butter in a large sauce pan over medium heat. And then this is where you add your garlic cloves in the butter and then you turn the heat to low and you gently cook that garlic, that roasted garlic for three to five minutes until the garlic becomes golden in color. You're gonna mash up the garlic clove as it's cooking with a wooden spoon and it's already fairly mashed up because you squeeze it out of the, you know, squeeze it out of its skin while this is happening.

Speaker 0 (00:13:01) - You add chili flakes and ugh, that smells so good, but it didn't make it add a nice flavor, but didn't make it like super spicy or anything like that. So you know, Gloria, my mother-in-law, who I've mentioned many times before in this show, did not say anything about the spice, neither did anybody else, but it just really does add some nice flavor. So you add in some of that, you cook it for a little bit and then you put the spaghetti squash straight in the pan with a splash of water and you cook that up of course, while all this is happening, you're boiling your pasta and you cook the pasta for a little bit less than the packaged direct directions and you add salt to your pasta water as you should probably always be doing. Then you cook the pasta for four minutes less than what the package calls for.

Speaker 0 (00:13:41) - And once that's ready, you strain it, you throw it in with your garlic butter squash Milan, add a splash, that pasta water, which I actually remembered this time, the last pasta dish that I made for this show. God, I really do like pasta, don't I? But I digress. The last pasta dish I forgot to use, reserve some of the pasta water, which has some nice saltiness to it. Uh, I did not do that, but I did remember that this time. So you're going to add the pasta into the pan with the garlic butter melange, the splash of pasta water you put in your cheese, your Parmesan, you tossed to combine. If you need a little bit of more water to loosen up the sauce, then you can do that here. You cook it for three minutes and then you serve it right away. And that's it.

Speaker 0 (00:14:25) - It is as easy. I mean, maybe as you're listening to this, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But of course I'll have the recipe in the show notes so you can follow along easily. And then when you serve it, you serve it with a drizzle of olive oil. And here's where the magic happens. Obviously, you can easily add your serving of infused olive oil in whatever ratio or preference that you have. And that's what's so great about this particular one because olive oil and passes are just like, like a match made in heaven. I love olive oil. I, how have I not been to Italy yet, is the question that I ask myself on a regular basis. So if anybody wants to foot the bill for me to go to Italy, so I can try the pasta there that I've heard is so wonderful. The coffee, the olive oil wine, the pizza, ugh, gastro norm's dream.

Speaker 0 (00:15:10) - I mean the edibles there could be wild what's going on with Italy and legalization. Anyway, I really must find out because that would be a killer combo. In any case, that's it. You got somebody who's got a wicked high tolerance, you can add a little more stronger olive oil on it. You got somebody who's, you know, a little more, got a more reasonable or a low tolerance. You can add just a little bit because of course you can always add ratios as well. If you have somebody that has a really monster high tolerance, they need quite a bit of olive oil, they're gonna add more. But if somebody has a lower tolerance, which is just based on biology people, then you just add a, you know, just add your infused THC or cbd B olive oil, a drizzle on top, and then you can always add more regular olive oil as needed.

Speaker 0 (00:15:59) - And that's what I love about this recipe. It's like a regular recipe, but then you just infuse at the end like chefs kiss. Ah, that's so good, so good. I know I'm definitely making this for dinner tonight now that I've talked about it so much. And so that's it. You can serve this with a side salad, which is what I did, and it's fabulous. And again, if you add a little dessert and maybe an after dinner decaf coffee, you've got a nice meal on your hands that didn't take you too long to put together. And I just wanna say thank you to Carolina Galen for this recipe. I've been following her on Instagram and I'll link to her Instagram in the show notes, her website as well because she has a lot of great recipes over there. And she's a very talented cook. I have done a few of her recipes so far for this show because they're easily, they're easy and accessible.

Speaker 0 (00:16:45) - I think that's what I really like about them. None, nothing that she cooks seems to have anything. Doesn't require complicated uh, techniques in the kitchen. Doesn't require any crazy specialty ingredients. So anyone like you or I can go out to the grocery store, pick up what you need, and use your home cook cooking techniques to accomplish the goal of creating a beautiful and delicious meal that you can also infuse. And that's my contribution here. So thank you Carolina. I would love to get her on the podcast someday. So if any of you have any connections, please let me know. But she's got like a million followers. So unfortunately my attempts to get her attention by offering a guest spot on my show have gone unnoticed. Can you believe it? You never know. Maybe I'll surprise y'all one day, stranger Things have happened. That's it for this week, my friends.

Speaker 0 (00:17:32) - As always, if you know somebody who's also a pastor lover, please share this episode with them. It really helps to make the show more discoverable. You can always talk to me by email. I do have a new email address. Stay [email protected]. The old one will work as well if that's what you happen to have in in your email client because you've emailed me, emailed me before, or what have you. You can also reach me at SpeakPipe, the podcast hotline and leave me a voice message, which I also love. You can stay up to date with news events, questions for guests, giveaways, and all that other fun stuff with the Bite Me Edibles Enthusiast email newsletter. And I'd like to use that to help keep these episodes as timeless as possible so that you can go back a year from now and be like, Hey, I really wanna check out that spaghetti squash pasta recipe.

Speaker 0 (00:18:19) - And it's not filled with a whole bunch of references to things that are happening this month, cuz there are a lot of things going on except for four 20. I guess that makes it, I dunno, dated, but I digress. And do you know what will also help you make the best buttery garlic, her spaghetti squash, pasta, the products and services on the Marge Recommends page, check those out. Using those links and codes really does help me keep this show running. Now that's it for this week, my friends. I'm your host, Marge, and until next time, stay high. Welcome back friends. It is April and time for another Edibles Enthusiasts email newsletter giveaway. Whew, that was a mouthful, but your inbox won't be. I only sent out one, maybe two email newsletters a month, just enough to keep you informed about what's going on with Bite Me, the show about edibles and the wider world of edibles and cannabis.

Speaker 0 (00:19:16) - If you're already subscribed, you're automatically entered to win, and if not, you just have to tap or click the link in the show notes wherever you're listening to this and you'll be taken to the place where you can enter or head on over to Bite me podcast.com. The winner will be chosen April 30th, 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. But Marge, what will I win? Well, I'm excited to let you know that up for grabs this month is a bite me edibles journal so you can log your experience with all the wonderful edibles that you are making and buying. Don't delay. Enter now and good luck friends.