What's for Dinner: Marinara sauce with hot sausage and chunky vegetables over spaghetti squash

Cooking anything elaborate (AKA anything beyond sandwiches or leftovers) has to be a very social process for me. Since I'm in a long distance relationship and paleo requires a lot of cooking, I'm posting some meals here. Then I get to feel like I'm talking with someone the whole time, when in reality I'm just lonely. Ouch. That came out a little harsh.

I'm doing dinner posts because lunch is always left overs, and breakfast is a hurried forage for a piece of fruit before I scramble out the door, if it happens. Lunch used to be forage too, like a piece of fruit, a granola bar, boiled eggs, single serving bag of edamame, a fat carrot or some variation on that. Always grab and go. Better than buying Chick-fil-a and compromising both my wallet and moral values eh? I still consider it a good plan for anyone who can't bring themselves to arrange lunch, but is happy to toss things in a bag. 

Anyway, onto the food. I find myself arranging the stuff on the table to make it easier for me to think. Since yesterday's food tasted bland to me, I decided I needed some spice today in the form of hot sausage. I also have been feeling nostalgic for grains, so I decided that I'd give the spaghetti squash on my list a try. Cause, you know, it's got spaghetti in the title. That and needing to get rid of the last of the mushrooms, and the meal was already coming together. I'm gonna make my chunky sauce and have an Italian night. You can see that in my mind, I was going to make a tomato and avocado salad too, but to hell with that. Also yes, cheese is there. Not on the diet, but I'm not cutting dairy until the yogurt is gone, so whatever, Mr. Cheese. Not splitting hairs here. 

Ingredients for dinner minus a can of sauce, a can of stewed tomatoes, and spices.
Except for the good intentions in the back.

 This is the Spaghetti squash. You cut it in half, gut out the seeds, put them face down on a cookie sheet, and bake at 350 F for 45 minutes. Which is almost exactly the right amount of time to be leisurely with your sauce.

It's squash. Squash is not a fabulously photogenic fruit. We are kindred spirits.  

Sauce it coming along. You add spinach last. 

And they're done at the same time! Noodles never do that for me.

The flesh pulls off easily in angel hair sized strands.

It even swirls well on the fork.

Two bowels of this = Dinner. 

I loaded up on more sauce after I was done with this, I just wanted to show what the squash looked like next to the sauce.

Thoughts on taste: Of course my spaghetti sauce was the shit. It always is. I already like it the way I cook it, so no surprises there. However, people are lying to you if they say that spaghetti squash tastes just like pasta. It doesn't. It tastes like a very mild squash. Also the squash isn't particularly filling on it's own. But the squash is not without it's merits. It absorbs the flavor of the sauce very well, it clings to the sauce, and it spins on a fork better than pasta does. It fills the role of pasta quite nicely. I can and will eat this again.