Cooking

I must be feeling a bit better because I spent a lot of time in the kitchen today. (On the other hand, I had to sit down and rest frequently, so not a lot better.)

First I made some turkey sausage patties for breakfast. I didn't have all the spices called for in the recipe, but I used salt, pepper, fennel, thyme, garlic, cloves, and nutmeg. Verdict: Very tasty, super easy, and nice to have something other than bacon with my eggs once in a while. But next time I will skip the cloves and nutmeg, because that tasted as odd as it sounds.

I found some spaghetti squash at the store the other day, so next I decided to try it and see if you could really use it in place of spaghetti. I also made meatballs that I was sure the kids would eat; they were basically just balls of hamburger with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and fennel mixed in. (But I made sure to grind the fennel up first so they would never suspect they were eating something new.) Verdict: I wouldn't want to eat the spaghetti squash plain, but with sauce and mushrooms and meatballs all over it, you can't really taste it at all, so I'd say it was a success. It looks cool, too! And the kids seemed to like the stripped-down meatballs. Or at least they were eaten without dinnertime heartbreak. Close enough. (I cooked them real noodles and didn't make them try the squash.)

Finally, I took another stab at a cookie recipe I've been working on. They're not Paleo, because they contain chocolate chips with sugar, but frankly, they're a step up from the Frosted Mini-Wheats the kids used to eat all day. They're made from almond butter, apples, cocoa powder, coconut milk, coconut flour, salt, and chocolate chips. They're not really sweet enough right now unless you load them up with the chocolate chips, but I'm experimenting to see how many apples I can get in there before anyone notices that they actually contain apples. Verdict: I loaded this batch with chocolate chips, so they were pretty awesome. The look and texture is exactly like "normal" cookies, and they are almost sweet enough. I'll post my recipe if I ever get it just right. It's pretty darn good for a low-sugar, wheat-free, egg-free, dairy-free cookie.