Are You Inspiralized?

The title of this post comes from a blog called Inspiralized, "a food blog devoted to all things spiralized".  It inspired me to get out the spiralizer Stan and I bought at Uwajimaya and try out some zucchini noodles.  They turned out pretty good!  I sauteed them very briefly in a dab of coconut oil and tossed with leftover pesto, tomatoes and some mozzarella cheese.

We bought the more expensive of the two models we looked at and it works fine, but I noticed that some of the videos and photos on the Inspiralized site show a wider size.  They sell an "inspiralizer" that makes four shapes and is set with a dial instead of changing the blades manually.  It also says theirs is BPA-free plastic, and I'm not sure about the one we got.  Theirs costs about the same as ours (~$50), and if I were buying again I'd get theirs.

This spaghetti shape is the biggest I can make and there is an even smaller size I haven't tried yet.

The next recipe I made is this carrot beet salad with walnut dressing and goat cheese from Rejuvenated For Life.  I had never eaten beets raw before, and was skeptical, but cut this thin they were very good.  I made the walnut dressing in the recipe, but I think it would be just as good with vinegar and oil, or, for guests, I might try a dressing made with orange juice and add some glazed pecans or slivered almonds.  I would make this recipe again!

On the Inspiralized website, there is a list of veggies and fruits that can be spiralized, and the list is long!  There are beautiful photos, and each one links to a batch of recipes for that vegetable or fruit.  It is inspiring.

I usually avoid eating radishes because their flavor is just a bit sharper and zippier than I like.  I tried spiralizing a few though, and I found the thin strands added a nice bit of zip to my salad without having too large a bite of radish.  I would do this again.

I hadn't thought of spiralizing fruit, but I saw a tuna and apple salad suggested that sounded good.  I had some leftover turkey in the freezer, so I made the salad with turkey, spiralized apple, chopped celery and pecans.  Very good!  Of course, I could have done the same thing by just chopping the apple.  I think spiralizing made it a bit less noticeable in the salad as the pieces were quite small.

My spiralized yam turned out to be a yummy comfort food, much like eating a bowl of linguine with butter and salt.  I sauteed the yam noodles in butter and coconut oil with salt and pepper and added a tiny sprinkle of brown sugar and cinnamon - delicious!  I had thought the "noodles" would turn mushy, more like mashed potatoes, but they stayed quite noodle-like.  I can see some yam, sweet potato or white potato noodles could work in chicken noodle soup.

Here's a link to another recipe that sounds delicious - potato noodles baked with gruyère and asparagus.  I'll try that next!  

Bottom line:  am I going to start spiralizing on a regular basis?  Probably not, but I've enjoyed trying it out and I plan to try a few more of the many recipes I saw online.  It's a really quick way to cut up a vegetable or fruit, and kind of fun!