Mmmmm

Tonight, I made something so delicious!

So flavorful!

So summery!

You are going to want to purchase all of the ingredients and make it immediately!

I'll start by telling you that I used to follow recipes exactly. If they said to use 1/2 cup of green onions with 1/3 of them coming from the green part, I would do it. (Damn me and my gold personality.)

However, since discovering my food limitations, I now base things loosely on recipes that I find.

Tonight's dinner is a great example of that!

About three weeks ago I found a recipe in one of my cooking magazines for poached chicken. This was an idea that I had scoffed at years ago. I figured that cooking chicken in water would taste about like eating a piece of cardboard cooked in water.

I was wrong.

How very wrong I was. (But more on that later.)

Recently, I have been on a spaghetti squash kick (see below for an example). Since I try to avoid carbs, this is a good way to trick myself into thinking that I am eating pasta.

So, I found a recipe online for a baked lemon pasta, which I'm sure is good, but since I don't eat pasta, I had to modify it.

And modify it I did.

First, I put my spaghetti squash in the oven. The one I got was a little bigger than I normally like and it ended up taking longer to cook than was desirable, but I made it work.

While that cooked, I poached my chicken breasts. In my poaching liquid I put one whole lemon, sliced; half of a red onion, quartered; 4 cloves of garlic, peeled; a couple of sprigs of thyme, sage, and oregano; whole peppercorns, and kosher salt. (I went a bit crazy in Match.mom's herb garden tonight - and I must say that fresh oregano is a whole different flavor and scent than dried oregano - you must try it sometime!)

If you've never poached chicken, here is the quick run down - put your aromatics in a straight-side pan or pot and cover with liquid (about a 1/2 inch above them), and bring the water to a boil. Add chicken and bring back to a boil - cook for 3 minutes. After three minutes, cover the pot and remove from the heat. Let stand for about 18 minutes - giving the chicken plenty of time to cook through. Remove the chicken from the poaching liquid and set aside to cool. (I cooked six chicken breasts, too many for this recipe, but they are nice to keep in the fridge for the remainder of the week.)

About 10 minutes before your spaghetti squash is done, melt two tablespoons of butter in a small pan. Add an equal amount of olive oil and saute. Throw in about three cloves of garlic, minced-ish. (I don't mind having my garlic a little bigger, it saves me time in the chopping process - I'm not very patient.) Squeeze one whole lemon into the pan (make sure and remove the seeds, I did not do a good job of this and was fishing them out.) Add about 1 tablespoon of lemon zest and 2 tablespoons of cream, stir and cook. (I didn't say it was low fat, but at least you aren't eating carbs...) I turned the sauce down to low while I tore up two chicken breasts and processed the spaghetti squash to get the "meat" out.

Put the strings of the squash and the chicken in a bowl, add 1/4 cup fresh chopped parsley and a little less freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Salt and pepper to taste then pour the sauce over it. Mix well and enjoy!

You will think that there isn't enough sauce at first, but keep mixing - the flavors in the sauce are so strong that a little goes a long way.

Seriously, I'm still tasting lemony goodness on my tongue.

The parsley, the garlic, the lemon, they all come together in a brilliant combination that makes you think of summer!

I paired it with a red zinfandel that made my heart sing, but most people would probably go with a white wine (I just happen to refuse to drink white wine.)

Seriously - go try this.

You will hate yourself if you don't!