Paleo Spaghetti

Spaghetti has always been one of my most favorite meals so I was truly crushed when my food allergies took it away from me. However, once I learned about and made my first spaghetti squash I honestly feel like I don’t miss out anymore. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t gladly go back to normal spaghetti… but I really do love this new option. And it’s just as quick and easy to make.

Start by cutting off the top and bottom of the squash. Then slice it length-wise and scoop out all the seeds. This part is Jesse’s job because they are really hard to cut through.

Spaghetti squash

The first time I cooked mine in the oven, then someone told me that the microwave works much better. I like to add a little water to the bottom of the dish so that it steams well and microwave for 10-12 minutes depending on the size of the squash.

Cooking squash

When it’s finished, it should shred easily with a fork. Make sure to get all the way down to the skin, it makes a whole lot more food than I realized at first… plus it is really filling.

Finished squash

Then it’s ready to be topped with your favorite spaghetti sauce. I like to use Muir Glen tomato products and mix with ground beef to make it more filling. I love their sauce because it’s just tomatoes and spices… nothing I’m allergic to!

Spaghetti sauce

Of course, you have to add parmesan cheese on top, too.

Spaghetti dinner

Have you ever tried spaghetti squash? It’s really good, give it a try! Enjoy!

Weekends

Weekends are so much nicer than they used to be when I had to go to work. Sounds backwards because we would always be looking forward to the next weekend, but now we actually have so much more time and energy to enjoy our weekends. We get recharged and re-energized over the weekends. We are able to start each week being motivated about what we want to accomplish instead of dreading yet another Monday.

Before I began working at home with Jesse, nothing got done around the house during the week. So weekends were filled with chores, grocery shopping, and errands that needed to get done. Now I usually have time to get most of that kind of stuff done during the week which leaves weekends open for fun stuff. It makes me realize how lucky I am that we are able to have the lifestyle that we do.

One of the blogs that I enjoy reading is called Enjoying the Small Things. The name of her blog pretty much explains what she blogs about. She is always talking about how her family can be doing nothing, yet it is so very something. I feel like we moved a little closer to that idea this weekend. Even though we didn’t go anywhere or do anything fabulous, which would have been great also, we did enjoy time together just relaxing. We really needed some relaxing nothingness after how busy we have been lately.

Movie watching

This weekend we just stayed home… and it was good! On Saturday I made a big mess baking in the kitchen while Jesse took a much needed nap. We did a lot of catching up on our TV shows, watching movies, and playing games. Good weekend, now back to getting our stuff done.

Family Time

We had a fun family time last night with Jesse’s parents, Jerry and Mildred. They are in town and staying with us this week. As long as I’ve known Jesse, his family has enjoyed pizza and movie night so it was fun to have that again last night.

The funny thing is that pizza used to be an easy meal to make for everyone. I thought it was quite funny that we had four people and we were making four different pizzas to suit everyone’s tastes and allergies. Mildred made her homemade pizza crust for herself and Jerry, half with regular tomato pizza sauce and half with a non-tomato pizza sauce while I made my new, special crust for myself and Jesse, since I can’t have her crust, with different amounts of cheese. (No pizza sharing allowed at our house!) Then we had to coordinate oven usage to cook the two different types of pizzas. All turned out great in the end as we had our fill of pizza while watching our netflix movie… Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.

Their pizzaOur pizzas

After the movie was over we enjoyed snacks while playing Yahtzee. And I won the first game by awesomely scoring a double Yahtzee!

Yahtzee