Fire dept standing by....I'm in the kitchen!

I love reading recipes. I read recipes a lot. And then I hoard them. I have a ton of recipes just saved in recipe boxes and folders on the interwebz. Well....that's gotten boring. So now I am going to start trying them out because....because I said so!

Okay, but you need to understand I hate cooking. Maybe it's the mess it makes I hate. Either way, I hate being in the kitchen. I like baking. But cooking? Blah. You should also know, I'm not creative enough to come up with my own recipes, so the recipes I'll be trying come from other sources. Here's the fun part for you! I'll be blogging about my little recipecades! (I just made that up! It's like escapades...only with recipe...oh never mind.) I will share the recipes here, of course. Maybe some pictures of things I make. I have my favorite recipe sites, which I will share as I go.

Anyway, let the adventure begin! Here's what I made last night: Spaghetti with Zucchini and Yellow Squash.
I got this recipe from the back of a Barilla box. Husband isn't a huge fan of red sauce and I get tired of the same thing all the time. Zucchini and yellow squash were on sale, so here we go.

What you need:
1 box whole grain spaghetti
1 med. yellow onion, diced
1/3 c. olive oil
1 clove garlic
1/2 med (2 cups) yellow squash, diced
2 small (2 cups) zucchini, diced
1/2 cup (10 med leaves) basil, chopped
1/8 tsp pepper
Salt to taste, 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

Here's what you do:
Cook pasta (duh)
Saute onion in olive oil in skillet over med. heat for 6 minutes. Add garlic and saute for 2 minutes. Add yellow squash and zucchini and cook for another 6 minutes. Stir in basil and pepper. Season with salt. Toss the pasta with sauce and add Parmesan cheese.

Mine looked like this:

I really like squash and zucchini

The most exciting part for me was getting to use fresh basil straight from our garden!

Fresh basil straight from our garden

I put the Parmesan out so the kids could put their own on it. I honestly think that is their favorite thing about spaghetti. They weren't thrilled with this version, however. They prefer red sauce. Red sauce makes it easier to hide the good stuff. Here the good stuff is just hanging out for all to see. Husband and I really liked this though. And for someone like me, who sets things on fire and has no culinary skills whatsoever, I think I pulled this off. It was easy and quick to make. Oh and I added a little more than 2 cups of the squash and zucchini because I really like squash and zucchini. Oh and I'm totally uneducated: are they fruits or veggies? Anyway, I give this recipe 3 (out of 5) monkeys (monkeys is going to be my rating system). It's a 3 because it wasn't a hit with the kids (yes, I know you have to introduce something at least 5,000 times before they will eat it, but let's face it, that won't happen.) It has potential!