Joy Comes in the Morning

As promised, I tried a new red pasta sauce tonight for dinner! Red pasta sauce has always been my favorite over white sauce. I think it’s because I love tomatoes so much. Like, a lot. If you are what you eat, then I am a tomato. 🙂

I actually have the perfect red sauce recipe for pasta, in my opinion. It’s also a crock pot recipe. Even better! I found it a few years ago and have never looked back. But sometimes I just want to mix it up! We only eat pasta once a week, but I like it to feel like a different meal each time.

For dinner tonight we had pasta with red sauce and salads. I made myself spaghetti squash and Eric had thin spaghetti. Now, spaghetti squash is one of those things I had never heard of until a few years ago. It’s really a cool vegetable! You can microwave it(which I’ve never done) or you can bake it. I prefer to bake it even though it takes longer because I don’t want it to possibly explode and make a mess. 🙂

You cut it in half, lengthwise, which can be difficult to do because the outside is very hard! I scoop out the seeds in the middle and rub oil on the inside. Then I season it with whatever I want! Usually, I add minced garlic and Italian seasoning. I lay it on a sprayed baking sheet cut side down and bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes. Then comes the fun part. You take a fork and scrape the inside in long strokes. It ribbons apart and looks like spaghetti!

I think my favorite part about spaghetti squash is how much better I feel after eating it than pasta. It’s so easy for me to eat too much pasta, but spaghetti squash? Nope. I easily will get 2 meals out of one spaghetti squash.

Now, on to the sauce! Are you ready for the worst recipe ever? I like to think of myself as a chef. What I mean by that is I don’t exactly follow recipes…I follow my instincts. That’s how my parents cook and taught me to cook. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Taste it and alter accordingly. The secret is to start small and then add more. I don’t think I’ve ever made something too sweet or too salty and that’s because I don’t go crazy adding seasonings. If you need a recipe to start with, here was my inspiration!

Because there are only two of us, I only used 1/2 lb. of ground beef. I added in a little salt, Italian seasoning, fresh basil, fresh parsley, minced garlic, diced onion and petite diced tomatoes. I like the petite diced tomatoes because you get more tomatoes per can! Never a bad thing. 😉 I drained the meat and added everything else and let it simmer for less than 10 minutes. Done. So easy. And it was deliciously fresh! Sometimes I use this recipe without meat as well! It’s cheaper and just as flavorful. 🙂

If you haven’t tried spaghetti squash, you should! 🙂