Last night, I got the crazy idea to invite our friends, Matt & Laura, over. It was late already, 4:15 and so I was pretty sure they had plans but I called them anyways. Turns out, they were free! I was planning on making spaghetti and there is always enough spaghetti to go ’round!
I try not to eat a lot of regular pasta – when I do make spaghetti, I normally use spaghetti squash for the noodles. Carlos likes it, so I don’t use regular pasta. But…when you have guests over, serving them spaghetti squash might be a little tricky. Luckily, I knew we had a box of regular pasta in the cupboard. I stopped at the grocery store to grab a spaghetti squash for me but, given the time crunch, knew it was going to be tight. (I prefer to cook my spaghetti squash for 60-90 minutes to get it really mushy. It was already 5:15 and they were coming at 6:30pm.)
As I wandered throughout the grocery store, I remembered an item The Hungry Girl raves about, Tofu Shirataki noodles. I scanned the area by the tofu items and TA-DA! I was a little nervous, though, because I had read mixed reviews. Some people loved them, others, not so much. There were a lot of people who couldn’t get over the smell or the texture. But…it is always good to try things myself, so in the cart they went!
rinsing…rinsing…rinsing.
I rinsed for about 2 minutes and put them
in a bowl to, what else, smell ‘em.
eeeewww…everyone was right, they do smell!
Kind of like a cleaning solution-ish type of
smell although not as chemically - if that even makes sense.
I put the noodles back into the sink and rinsed some more. And that is exactly where I stopped reading the directions (I rarely follow directions, gets me in trouble a lot.) I rinsed some more and then let them sit for about 45 minutes – had I followed the directions, I would have dried the noodles off.
After I finished my noodles, I started the spaghetti
sauce. I also put out some crackers and cheese
spread + olives + poured some wine.
(Have you had the Charles Shwab wine? It is sold
at Trader Joes, is very inexpensive and I love it!)
Our dinner guests, Matt & Laura!
My plate, with my Shirtaki noodles.
Close-up.
My thoughts? I actually really liked them! I couldn’t tell a taste difference and even though I didn’t dry them off like the instructions said, the smell did go away. Once I got the sauce on them, they looked like & tasted like real noodles! The only draw-back that I see was the texture. They weren’t as rubbery I had thought based on other peoples reviews but they were slightly gummy. A little tougher to break down in my mouth but after the first few bites, I didn’t even notice!
I definitely would recommend trying them – they are low calorie & low carb and a great alternative to regular pasta if that is what you watch.
After dinner, I whipped up a batch of cookies.
(I had the dough in the fridge, on a tray.
So really just put them in the oven.)
Working out. Or not.
I gotta be honest, I have not worked out since last Thursday. I wrote yesterday that I definitely do try to get my workouts in while at work but that doesn’t always fit into my daily schedule. And that is the case this week. Moving definitely gives a person every excuse not to work out. And sadly, I have allowed them, them darn excuses, to win. Last night, since we had guests over, I again, did not work out.
Today I have an all-day meeting and then tonight, I have an appt at 5:15 and then, despite the fact that I just want to come home and work on putting stuff away, I’m forcing myself to work out. You will hold me accountable, right?
(on a scale note, my weight has hovered around 151.5-151.8 for the past week. Numbers on the scale don’t matter, I still need to work out. Healthy = active.)
