Do you ever have a moment where you just thank God for Netflix? That was me Friday night. Let me set the scene. Sitting in bed sipping tea, dog snuggled up at my hip, attempting to tackle a cross stitch pattern and watching episode after episode of various cooking competitions.

I don’t know about you, but when I watch TV in general it makes me hungry. Everything the characters eat I suddenly crave. Within a 30 minute span I can want tacos, pizza, pancakes etc. That’s also just a typical Tuesday…but you get the point.

So how does this relate to spaghetti? I’m getting there, just hold on a second. One of the baking shows I watched had a competition where they had to make a dessert look like a savory dish. Can you guess what that dish was? Spaghetti! See how I tied that all together? *Brushes off shoulder*

I decided that I would make The Beard & I a delicious plate of pasta on Saturday. However, I didn’t want just any ole jar of sauce! I wanted to make my own! So I started with some tasty ingredients. I like a sauce to be hearty, as in the pasta is there, but the sauce is the real meal. On the cutting board is a red onion, zucchini, eggplant and parsley.

I chopped all that up and began sauteing until slightly soft. It already smelled amazing!

Meanwhile The Beard was cooking up some delicious sage sausage for our sauce.

Next I chopped up some parsley. I was pretty excited when I found these dried oyster mushrooms at the store, so I decided to chop them up and reconstitute them in the sauce!

I added two cans of organic stewed tomatoes to the mix. I know the picture is pretty steamy but this is real time photography folks.

While my sauce was simmering away I added our gluten free spaghetti to the boiling water. We don’t eat a lot of pasta, even the gluten free kind. Following a Paleo diet doesn’t mean you substitute everything gluten free for the items you are trying to avoid. We are also big fans of using a spiralizer, but occasionally we indulge in some GF pasta.

This is where things got weird. The spaghetti was the Simple Truth Brand, which I bought at Kroger. While I have purchased many of their products I have never tried their pasta. After tossing it in the pot the water started to turn a white-ish cream color, like someone had dumped cornstarch in the mix. From there it continued to thicken and the noodles turned into a gelatinous mess! We strained the noodles and the sink filled up with noodle gravy so thick we had to get the sprayer to wash it off. Since I didn’t know what the mystery goop was we opted to forgo the spaghetti noodles! Thankfully there was a box of Penne in the pantry! Pasta party round 2!

While the pasta was boiling once more, I whipped together a chopped salad with cranberries, flax seeds and a pomegranate vinaigrette. So good!

Finally the penne was ready and cooked to perfection, thanks to The Beard, and dinner was ready!

Our hearty, savory and sorta spaghetti was delicious! In the kitchen, just as in life, you gotta roll with the punches and be happy with sorta anything!