I gasped when Oprah proudly proclaimed her love for bread on the new Weigh Watcher commercials. “Me too!” I yelled at the T.V. as my husband looked on startled. And pasta. Yeah, I’d definitely bring up pasta if I was interviewed for the commercial.
Somewhere around 2014 the crusade against carbs took a turn for the weird when people who had previously given up pasta decided that spiralized zucchini was an adequate replacement for a perfectly cooked bowl of al dente pasta. They were wrong, but it didn’t stop the early adopters of the gluten-free, grain-free, or carb-free lifestyles from propagating the lie. Almost overnight restaurants started ladling Bolognese over squash noodles, and we all made room in our kitchens for a spiralizer of some shape or size.
The first veggie to fall victim to the plant pasta trend were zucchinis. Chefs and home cooks alike ran a few through a plastic instrument with sharp teeth and called the curlicues zoodles. Cute. I was skeptical of the zoodles trend and definitely wasn’t willing to risk my fingertips on what I felt sure was a fleeting trend until I gave up pasta in solidarity with my husband who does not tolerate gluten and other grains.
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