I don’t think I’ve made it a secret that I’m a Dinner Planning drop out.  Tonight was one of those nights where I found myself slapping together whatever ingredients I had on hand in an attempt to turn those ingredients into a meal.

I do have other secrets though.  If you listen carefully, I’ll whisper some to you while I slap together this post.

So what do we have here?  A small spaghetti squash, sweet potatoes three and four, the de facto garlic and onion, plus a bunch of canned stuff.

(Secret #1 – coconut milk is the “make anything taste good” ingredient.)

Pre-heat your oven to 350 and then halve your spaghetti squash with the biggest knife you’ve got on hand.

(Secret #2 – If your knife gets stuck while trying to cut your squash in half, just bang the squash on your cutting board like a giant squash hammer until it makes it’s way through the squash and gets unstuck.)

(Secret #3 – You will likely amuse yourself and/or any small children in the vicinity when squash seeds go flying across your kitchen like fireworks when following the method outlined in Secret #2.)

Scrape seeds out with a spoon, place squash halves face down on a lightly oiled baking sheet and slide it into your pre-heated oven.

(Secret #4 – do you see how all those slots in the knife block up there are empty?  That’s a sure sign there’s a counter full of dishes behind me that need to be washed.)

Next we’ll saute garlic and onion, followed by tomatoes, diced sweet potatoes, coconut milk, curry powder plus some salt and pepper.

(Secret #5 – that can of coconut milk is quite nicely blocking the clutter on my counter from our view.  Boy, coconut milk does all sorts of amazing stuff!)

Bring curried sweet potato stew to a boil and then cover and reduce to a simmer.  This can be considered Ready! as soon as the potatoes are soft, about 30 – 40 minutes.  Throw in your can of rinsed and drained chick peas for the last 15 minutes or so of cooking.

Because the squash was small, it too was ready in about 40 minutes.  Spaghetti squash is like any other squash I’ve ever met; you know it’s ready when you can easily stick a fork into it.  When squash is cooked, scrape the “spaghetti” out of the squash and into your dish.

(Secret #6 – a big thanks to the tripod that made this picture possible – a tripod I also sometimes call “a can black beans”.)

With your spaghetti squash in bowls, load that slapped together sweet potato curry on top:

No secrets here,

now it’s just time to eat!