June 11, 2012 - A Recipe Fluke

Good Monday morning, I have a doctor's appt at 10:30 to get my bi-annual check-up and so NO COFFEE with half/half until almost lunch. UGH! I love a good cup of coffee in the mornings. I have one of those coffee pots that grinds the beans and makes the coffee at 5:30 each AM, so that the aroma joins my alarm clock in the morning ritual of getting me out of bed. I LOVE IT! And, how much more on a cloudy, rainy morning??? Or well, gotta have my blood checked and that happens with no food or coffee. BUT, 11:30 will get here and I will go to DD and get my special cup. I actually stumbled onto a recipe this weekend as I was trying to consolidate left overs. (PS - if you didn't ck your email on Saturday I sent a yummy one for homemade key lime pie yogurt that's FABULOUS! I promise - even my husband adores it) But anyway, I made a spaghetti sauce last week with fire roasted tomatoes, tomato sauce, vidalia onions, some smoked sausage and some seasonings. Terry loved it. NOW....my spaghetti squash (2 medium) were actually overcooked and instead of looking and feeling like pasta, they looked like mush and were watery. So I left the bowl in the fridge for a couple of days not sure what to do - but knew that it needed to be used. You know we all do that. :) Friday evening I got into a creative, cooking mode. I took the bowl of spaghetti squash and added three large eggs that I had beaten, some sea salt, garlic salt, the remainder of the spaghetti sauce (about 5-6 cups minus the meat - it was all eaten), and a small bag of 2% skim mozzarella cheese. I mixed all this well and placed in a baking dish sprayed with Pam and started baking it on 400. After about 30 min, I turned the temp to 450 and added sprinkle cheese (parm) and let the cheese crisp up and brown a bit (maybe another 15 min). I served this will grilled pork tenderloin and grilled yellow squash. It was FABULOUS! I don't know the exact amounts as this was a "left over" project - but we LOVED it! And, it was better on Saturday. I think I wlll call this Italian Spaghetti Squash Bake. I will work on details, but needless to say - it's close and worth the effort. My husband said it reminded him of lasagna - not me, but a YUMMY, yummy side dish none the less. Let me know if you try either of these new recipes, or the cabbage one I sent last week. I am trying to explore new recipes with different things. Here's some info from Jenny (in Texas): Hey I know you have been talking a lot about non-sugar products. A lot of the stores here are starting to sell Erythritol, it's a lot finer than Xylitol so it works as a great powdered sugar substitute for say icings and such. I used it in my cheesecake recipe and works great, just doesn't give everyone tummy issues :) Made some this week for a Birthday today, I'm interested to see everyone's reaction to the sugar free aspect! Also I found a sweetener similar to Agave Nectar called Coconut Nectar but without the higher glycemic index. It's great on top of almond flour pancakes. Has kind of a maple flavor. Don't you love this? I know that eating, for us, has to really be viewed as refueling or we can get into the "I'm bored and quit" mode, but even refueling can be fun! Choose life and eat to live, PK