Paleo Fettuccine

I have baked spaghetti squash and used that as a pasta substitute many times. A while ago my husband made this Indonesian vegetable dish with zucchini ribbons that was so delicious and reminded me of fettuccine. Tonight instead of baking a spaghetti squash for our "pasta" dinner I peeled yellow and green zucchini for some fettuccine with meat sauce.

Ingredients:

5 zucchinis, yellow and green for color variation. Pick skinny ones
1 pound ground meat of your choice
1 jar of Paleo spaghetti sauce or your own homemade
oil

Cook the meat. While the meat is cooking use a vegetable peeler to peel off ribbons of the squash. Try to get them the whole length of the squash so you can slurp them up like real fettuccine. I found this was easiest by laying the squash on the cutting board and holding it steady on the sides, constantly turning to make sure the ribbons weren't too wide. Peel until you expose the seeds, then stop. (The seedy part it too wet to make good fettuccine but is good roasted. Chop these up and save them for tomorrow night's dinner of roasted veggies and protein.)

By now your meat should be done so pour in the sauce. Doctor it up however you would like adding spices or more veggies. (Honestly my straight-from-a-jar sauce was pretty lame, it needed some flavor added but I was lacking inspiration.)

Place meat sauce in a serving bowl. Add a little oil to the pan if needed then throw in the squash ribbons/fettuccine. Toss to get the oil distributed, add a dash of water, like maybe 1/4 cup, cover and steam for a few minutes. When they are tender, but not mushy, put in a serving bowl and you are ready to eat!

The texture of the zucchini was good, kind of chewy in the same way a mushroom is that has been grilled or sauteed. It's a great way to eat a whopping bowl of zucchini and this will be a fabulous way to eat the piles of zucchini that appear around August.


Toddler report: 3 year old preferred meat. Direct quote for dinner tonight "yum, yum, yum, more meat!" The almost 2 year old ate it all, dangling ribbons of zucchini over his head and swallowing them whole. Makes a mom proud!