Oops, it's Valentines Day!

I forgot that both my husband and I would be home on Valentines Day, I should have planned better.  I wanted to throw a corned beef brisket on the traeger, that would have been special.  Too bad we didn't have one.  So late in the afternoon I punted with ground beef.  For him it was a win, for me it was cooking two meals and experimenting for a couple of hours in the kitchen.  See below for what I came up with.  You'll notice still too much chicken and not enough other meat variety.

Recent good meals:

Trader Joes Red Lentils with crumbled chicken sausage.

Spaghetti Squash with chicken sausage

Yummy products:

Chia Bars

Trader Joes Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

Trader Joes Freeze Dried Mangos

TJ's Red Lentils

I followed the direction on the back of the lentils package, but decreased the red pepper flakes to 1/2 tsp (next time will make it 1/4 tsp) and used Leprechaun Golden Cider instead of wine, it turned out delicious.  I had just made a fresh batch of chicken bone broth and that helped develop a nice deep flavor.  The recipe used half the package of lentils and was enough for me to have 3-4 meals with it.  A couple of times I topped the lentils with my chicken sausage crumbles.  If the red pepper flakes hadn't been so strong, I would have added a couple dabs of Sriracha sauce on top.

Spaghetti Squash with Chicken Sausage:

The husband and I ended up at home on Valentines day with nothing planned for dinner.  We were both tired, had only a few ingredients in the cupboard, and ground beef in the freezer. He is a happy camper with Hamburger Helper Beef Stroganoff, I obviously can't eat that.  I decided to make him the HH and use spaghetti squash for me with some GB and a homemade paleo sauce.  Last night I reflected on how I've gone from rarely cooking, to making two meals at a time, crazy!  I also end up running the dishwasher every other day since I've adopted this new way of eating. Ok, back to the meal...

I like to roast my spaghetti squash at 375 for 30-40 mins, or until fork tender.  After it's cut in half and cleaned out, I slather it in TJ's garlic EVOO and season with whatever spices float my boat that day, then put it in the oven cut side up.

  I looked up a recipe for Paleo Beef Stroganoff, but it made way more than I needed so I just wrote down the ingredients and guessed on the amounts for what I needed.  I started by sauteeing onions in ghee.  Then added full fat coconut milk, chicken bone broth, Leprechaun Golden Cider (all sauces are delicious when cooked with alcohol.  Cider is my gluten free answer), dried parsely, salt and pepper.  Unfortunately after adding the coconut milk, I added too much bone broth and cider which thinned the sauce down too much.  I was never able to boil off enough liquid to get much thickness to the sauce.  I had used leftover coconut milk and didn't have any extra to add back in. I think if I had considered that to begin with, it might have been wonderful.  I was just too excited to get all those flavors in there, however it did taste good. From the Googling I did, it sounds like making a roux with coconut flour doesn't work out well either, but that is something I'd like to try for myself.

To put it all together I ended up using sliced chicken sausage on top of the squash and spooned the sauce on top.  It was good, but next time I'll do a better job keeping the sauce thick.