Once upon a time I told you about my dad’s crazy “grew up in India but wasn’t Indian, mom from Italy in a family circus and dad from who knows where” background.

Crazy right? Well, it gets even better.

He was also raised Jewish by a pretty orthodox (from what I hear) grandfather, practiced until he left India at 18, then came to the states, met my mom and somehow they both not only convinced a priest to marry them in a Catholic church, but also allow my dad to take communion during the ceremony.

That’s like complete blasphemy now in 2012, so in 1979 it was even crazier.

He eventually converted to Catholicism when I was in 5th grade and I very vividly remember sitting through that Easter vigil 3 hour mass for his ceremony. To a 9 year old, it was the closet thing to physical torture that existed.

So he’s part Indian, but not really. Part Jewish, but not any more. And part Italian, part who the hell knows what else.

And yet with all that confusion as to religion and descent, we never even had a damn latke in my house once growing up.

The closest we got to any traditional Jewish food was a stale box of matzo in the pantry that really does nothing as far as bolstering the reputation of Jewish food.

What’s up with that, dad?

So for a girl who can’t even spell menorah without having to look it up or even begin to tell you the meaning behind it (I’m sure I learned it in ccd, but had we actually gotten graded in there, I probably would’ve come out with about a 23 as an average grade, religion just isn’t my thing),

I’m pretty proud of these spaghetti squash latkes.

They’re not traditional at all using spaghetti squash instead of potatoes (if you’re looking for a more traditional recipe, we love these potato pancakes), but that’s mainly because consuming an entire spaghetti squash by yourself goes a lot slower than you anticipated and are used to when there’s normally 2 people in a household.

And push was coming to shove with the shelf life remaining in that tupperware container.

You could totally cook spaghetti squash either in the oven or the air fryer for the purpose of making these latkes but using leftovers works just as well too.

So, I figured since tradition was already bucked, why not throw in some jalapeños to buck it up even more and make these spicy spaghetti squash latkes.