Sausage and Kale with Butternut Sauce and Spaghetti Squash

Mom came over for dinner earlier this week and I made a variation of this pasta dish from A Skinny Taste, but I also added some cannellini beans – it was to die for!  I had some butternut squash sauce left over, so I used it for a pasta-free version tonight.  I started by browning some sausage and adding onions, sage, and mushrooms in a big sauté pan we got as a wedding shower gift!

Once the onions and mushrooms had cooked down a bit, I added some chopped kale and let it cook down.  Then I added the remainder of my butternut squash sauce (I wish I had written down everything I put in – it was a butternut squash I cooked in boiling water, plus about 3-4 oz cream cheese, maybe a splash of chicken stock, salt, and pepper).

I added some fresh nutmeg with my Microplane – also a wedding present (we got so many wonderful gadgets!)

Meanwhile I had roasted some spaghetti squash in the oven and sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and ground sage, so I scraped out the squash fibers once it was done…

We could’ve served the sausage/butternut mixture on top of individual portions of the squash, but we elected to just mix it all together in the pan before portioning out and topping with parmesan cheese.

It was perfect – a little spicy, a little sweet, and chock-full of veggies!  We’ll definitely do this again over the fall and winter months.

Crock Pot BBQ and Back to Normalcy Post-Wedding

We got a new crockpot as a wedding gift and are having fun with it!  One of our favorite things to do is pulled pork.  Friday night, Jason put together a friggin’ awesome rub comprised of ground coffee, some chili powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, coriander, cayenne, thyme, minced onions, and probably a couple other things I’m forgetting.

We put the rub on Friday night after we got home from a family dinner and let it sit in the fridge wrapped in plastic wrap.  The next morning we put it in the crock with a little bourbon to cook on low for about 8 hours while we did stuff during the day.

At that point, it was ready to shred and enjoy!

  

We had some friends over to watch football Saturday night and had pulled pork, my lightened-up coleslaw, baked beans, and a few other little nibbles. 

Since I’ve been wedding planning for the last 10 months or so, it’s nice to try to get back to a routine and some sense of normalcy.  I might write a blog post about wedding stuff once we get photos back from the photographers, but I’d like to try to focus on blogging about food and recipes with even a shred of consistency!  Jason and I are ready to get back to healthier eating after our honeymoon, so hopefully this will help us!