Give me your poor, your misunderstood, your strong-flavored or your dark and leafies. It doesn’t really matter to me, if it’s a vegetable, I will pretty much eat it. Oh sure, there are some vegetables that I like more than others. I could eat aspargus by the spindly dozen, and cauliflower, give it to me any which way, roasted, steamed or in a gratin, and you have one happy diner. Other vegetables I feel more moderate about: iceberg lettuce for instance, unless it’s chilled, sliced into wedges, and served with bleu cheese dressing, can be pallid. But I must admit, this one stumps me.

I’ll give this spaghetti squash the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I purchased a rather bland one. But my spaghetti squash had to have been the most watery and insipid variety know to squash-eating man. Now I prepared my squash in the basic fashion– cut in half, a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, then placed the squash, cut side down, to roast for 45-50 minutes at 375 degrees.

I admit it, I was enthralled with the cooked squash. Spooning the seeds out, I took a fork, and gingerly scraped the flesh from the skin. And voila! thin strands of spaghetti-like webbing were made. The transformation was almost fun. But the taste was far less dynamic. After the scraping, I tasted and was less than impressed. So I even sauteed the strands in some garlic, and good green olive oil. That was kind of…meh. But still nothing to write home about.

I often read in cooking magazines that low-carb dieters should just go ahead and use spaghetti squash instead of regular pasta in their traditional Italian suppers. Let me just say, I feel sorry for those dieters. While the vegetable variety might resemble pasta, it certainly does not have the same toothsome, starchy flavor.

But maybe I prepared this squash incorrectly. I certainly will not let the spaghetti squash die a graceful death, especially when I so love its cousins, the butternut, acorn, and kabocha to name a few. Does anyone else out there have some stupendous spaghetti squash recipe that they would like to share with me? I hate to let one squash tarnish an otherwise stellar record of equal- opportuniy eating.