May 4, 2011

This morning, my husband promised to take me on a walk. While he was doing business with the mainland, I threw the balls for Sarge and Baby. Roxy, on the other hand, is not at all interested in the ball. Well, she sort of is, but what she’s not interested in is fighting for the ball, so she hangs out with me and does nothing. Sarge can fit exactly 2 tennis balls in his mouth…not three, just two. The only way to get him to chase the ball is to take one of those balls out of his mouth. You see, if there are two already held, and he chases the ball, he uses his paws to try and corner it thus looking like a total dork. Dork is not a good word to use when describing a regal German Shepherd (frankly, if I were a dog I would so be into him). Besides the fact that he can’t retrieve it anyway if his mouth is full. After a good session with the tennis balls – good session meaning Sarge’s tongue is hanging down to his elbows and Baby’s tongue is curled up like a blow out party favor – it’s time for our walk. This is where Roxy gets all excited as she is the only dog that will put up with a leash. All this before breakfast, you ask? Yes, and by the time we get back from our walk we are ready to eat.

I was thinking those leftover crab stuffed mushrooms would be really good in scrambled eggs. Along with the scrambled eggs we had some Canadian Bacon and a piece of toast with coconut oil and honey, and of coarse some wheat grass. I actually remembered to get out our vitamins today so we had a bowlful of those as well.

Today, I am planning on Spaghetti Squash with red sauce for lunch which really takes a little time a effort to prepare, so here I go. Started out with one pound of mild Italian sausage from Whole Foods.  That amounts to 3 sausages. This is the easiest way to make meatballs. I simply squeeze the meat out of the casing and make meatballs. Done. In the pot I put a couple slugs of olive oil (extra virgin and enough to amply cover the bottom). Then I added the “meatballs”. I almost feel guilty about these meatballs as I do absolutely nothing other than rolling them up. To this mixture I added onions, garlic, turmeric (yes! turmeric. Although it is not an “Italian” spice it can be added to a red sauce without even noticing), a little jarred marinara sauce, chopped tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, chicken broth, bay leaves, crushed red pepper, honey, basil and oregano. My trick to a great red sauce is starting off thin, being patient and ending up with a flavor that is to die for.

Spaghetti Squash is a fabulous creation that God made. I’m thinking that man discovered spaghetti squash and decided to make spaghetti to mimick it. Super simple to cook and very much like “real” spaghetti, this winter squash is the perfect base for my red sauce. All I do is trim the two ends off, cut in half length wise, put upside down in a 13×19 glass pan with 1/2″ of water. Bake in the oven at 375 F for about 45 minutes or until fork tender. Once the squash is done, you simply turn it over, and using a fork, scrape out the insides. It naturally turns into these lovely spaghetti type strands. For those of you that are gluten-phobic or heaven forbid…gluten intolerant, this is the perfect dish to satisfy your Italiano side. Well, except for the fact that I did serve it with some bread. Nothing sops up that extra liquid like bread. Of coarse, the whole thing was topped off with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese and Henry added a really big sprinkle of those dried pepper flakes.

Just as a side note, since the oven was preheated, and I did still have cookie dough in the fridge, I thought that it would be “green” of me to use the heat in the oven to bake some cookies. Mmmmmm, it worked. By the way, when I make my cookie dough I only bake 1 cookie sheet at a time (12 cookies). I then store the cookie dough in the fridge and whenever I have baked something, hence heating up the oven I will throw in a batch of cookies. This way, the cookies are ever fresh and delightful. Nothing worse than a stale cookie.

Because lunch was so late today, we decided to just enjoy a little cheese and crackers for dinner. We had one of those meat and mozzarella rolls in the fridge so we just had a few slices of that and some of those super yummy Rain Forest crackers. The good thing about eating like this is you don’t go to bed with a full stomach and you sleep better.