The New Addiction...

My Christmas list this year didn't include a whole lot.  A new athletic jacket or two.  You know, to go with my Mom Uniform of yoga pants and/or jeans.  Maybe a little spending money for things like cold weather gear for running.  A print for a dining room gallery wall.

And a spiral vegetable slicer.

I'd actually told Chris that's what I wanted him to get me.  Instead, we ended up buying all new tires for the car.  That felt pretty extravagant.  More than enough.

We're old.  We've been married a long time.  New tires are fine.

So I asked my SIL, Carrie, to put that down as my request for Christmas.  

She's a foodie.  I'm not a foodie.  I'm a WANNA BE foodie.  Which is a vastly different thing.  

But those curly vegetables?  They looked super fun.  

And I was kinda hopeful the kids might think they were fun enough to actually eat.

Sweet Carrie got me just what I requested.  And I could not wait to get home and give it a try.

Of course, in anticipation, I pinned approximately 86 spiral vegetable recipes.  Because I have dreams but no real idea of how to make those a reality.

The first recipe I gave a shot was sweet potato curly fries.  The challenge?  Figuring out which blade to use for which vegetable.  The instructions gave me one size.  YouTube gave me another.  

Of course, that means I cut one sweet potato with one blade and one with the other.

That equals this...

We had chips with dinner instead.

But I moved forward UNDAUNTED.  You will not defeat me, Spiral!

Before I'd even opened the box, but after I'd pinned all those meals, I made the WISE decision to try only one spiral vegetable recipe per week.

One, no need to flood my system with these weird things called vegetables.  One at a time seemed much more intestinally forgiving.  Two, my children are not what you would call "Happy Explorers" when it comes to eating new things.  They're more like "Whachu talkin' about, Willis?"  

Good times.

The next week, I went back to a sweet potato recipe.  Because you can't keep a good cook down.  Sweets ain't winnin' this war.

This is sweet potatoes, spinach, roasted Brussels sprouts and sweet chicken sausage.

It was delicious.  

And Aubrey Kate LOVED it.  She actually asked to eat left overs the next day.

SCORE.

Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the next one.  So you'll have to imagine it.  And since I am so gifted with the descriptive, that won't be a problem.

My dad makes a cold spaghetti pasta salad.  It's A.MAZ.ING.  Family and friends adore this recipe.  I've made it for almost every get together out here.  There are two secret ingredients.  Which, I guess, I'll keep secret.  Email me if you want to know.  

The recipe converted nicely to gluten-free pasta.  I would under-cook the pasta slightly and let the pasta soak up all the dressing.  It was so good.  And got better after a full day in the fridge.

For the latest conversion, I replaced the gluten-free spaghetti noodles with spiral cut zucchini and yellow squash.  Then I piled in all the normal veggies in Mike's Spaghetti Salad.  Olives, bell pepper, mushrooms, green onions and cherry tomatoes. 

I didn't have time to let the veggies soak over-night but I'm not sure they needed it.

Holy smokes.

This was just as amazing as dad's.  Only completely made with vegetables.  

Heaven.

The last dish, I made last night.  A gluten-free chicken Parmesan with "zoodles."  I do have some g-free bread crumbs to make for real chicken parm but I don't care to do that much work.  

Maybe that's the reason I'm just a wanna be foodie.  I'm lazy.

I sauteed the onions and garlic, then added in the diced tomatoes with juice and then threw the browned chicken in to finish cooking.  Lots of Italian seasonings were added.  And then about two minutes left of cooking time, I added the curly zucchini "zoodles" to the side of the brazier.  

Perfection.

Even Chris commented on the success of this dish.

The kids were not fans of the "zoodles" but they're get used to it.  Cause those are not going away.

Basically, I've tried one of the recipes I pinned.  The others I converted from my own (or Dad's) recipes.  

Which just means I HAVE SO MANY LEFT.

There's one with goat cheese and bacon that's calling my name.  

Oh, and Chris did get me something other than tires.  He used a gift card for Target and got me some awesome cold running gear.