Grilled Lemon Prawns with Coconut Cream Squash Noodles

Let me just say – before we dig into the {other half of the} recipe I promised you back here – that my recipe plug-in is making me sad, and I’ve an orange striped cat named Dougal – sitting on the desk, just to the left of my left elbow – attempting to chew my hair.  Notwithstanding, it’s promising to be another stunningly warm and sunny Sunday in the great Pacific Northwest, and for that I am profoundly happy.  And grateful.  Especially grateful.  It’s been a long, hot Summer.  We don’t get that too often around here.

I am not sure how this happened, but it is now Wednesday and another 3 days have passed.  I’d secretly love it if this merry-go-round that I am currently on would slow down.  Just a touch.

A lot has happened since I rattled out that first paragraph.  For a start there’s been showing up at a fancy hotel on the side of a lake with enough Chocolate and Coffee Ice Creams for 180 people.  Mother Nature obliged with perfect eating-ice-cream-by-the-side-of-the-lake weather.  Last weekend saw some tourist activity going on while Ma and Pa were here.  I love being a tourist in my own town.  That usually involves riding the ducks, Pike Place Market and a quick trip up the side of Lake Washington.  This time was no exception. There’s also been an awful lot of dish-washing for a single girl.  Not to mention a couple of rather annoying headaches.  I blame the cease-and-desist order I slapped on all cans of Cherry Coke Zero within a 30 mile radius.  On top of all that busy-ness, the number of you swinging by my little blog exploded after I posted this recipe.  It was a very good kind of exploding – although it left me a little drained – mainly because it was so unexpected.  Had I known that what you really, really wanted was things that looked like they were really bad, but tasted awesome & made your back-fat go away, I’d have worked on that sooner.  I’m getting with the program now.

The highlight though was a podcast review that made me laugh out loud.  A listener wants me to be “more real, less zealous” – which wins the Oxymoron of the Week Award, since I am as zealous as I am exactly because I am being so real.  How can I not be completely over-excited about eating more and exercising less?  How can I not be wildly happy about finally discovering how to wave bye-bye to back fat after trying every diet known to man?  I mean.  Hello.  Which all just made me remember this great truth:  You can’t make everyone happy, no matter how hard you try. The good news is…that’s got nothing to do with you.

Now, let’s get back to the completely over-exciting and wildly happy topic of eating more.  Specifically more low carb and keto stuff that will help make all those wobbly bits disappear.  BOOM!

I already shared with you the salad that I served up with these Grilled Lemon Prawns with Coconut Cream Squash Noodles.  You remember – that was the salad I refreshed the next day, added a pound of grilled bacon to and called lunch. 

I’ve read about the using squash-for-noodles thing, but never actually tried it.  It was about time.  Eeny, Meeny and Miny are polite enough to just eat whatever is put in front of them, but they did look a little skeptical when I whipped the lid off the dish of “noodles”.  I had warned them that there would be no starchy stuff going down at the Brown house, so they were expecting something out of the ordinary.  They were not expecting what they got though.

You can serve the squash / zucchini “noodles” raw, but I prefer them warm.  If you choose to warm your “noodles”, you don’t want to cook them because they are so thin they will turn to mush very quickly.  I simply heat them through.  I used coconut oil and cream for 2 reasons – to stop the “noodles” sticking to the pan while they warm through, and also to add a little moisture and slipperiness (like pasta noodles).  The combination of coconut oil and cream also imparts a very light coconutty flavor which goes really well with the prawns and lemon.

Eeny, Meeny and Miny were flabbergasted at how good a meal without starch tasted.  No-one missed the pasta noodles.  One of them commented how her mother would just love me because she had eaten more vegetables at my house that night than in the previous year.  No one left the table feeling like they’d just eaten a meal of 80% veggies.  I converted 3 new keto devotees right there at my table.  It was awesome.

PS. It’s now Saturday. One whole week after I started telling you about this. Please don’t let it take you as long to make it as I spent trying to get the recipe to you. I think you’ll be really glad you tried it sooner rather than later.