Paleo Spaghetti

CaveBoy bought me a kindle fire!  It's OK, you can be jealous.  Between the fire, my Mac, and the TV, I won't miss a minute of Olympic coverage.  Did you know the events are streaming live?  Thank you NBC. Now I don't have to wait for prime time coverage to watch swimming and I don't have to worry about NBC cutting over to men's gymnastics in the middle of women's synchronized springboard.  Sure I'm a CrossFitter now, but my first love is the pool. I swam competitively for 10 years and even played a little water polo. So, I love the Olympics, it is the only time water sports are shown on TV.

Sometimes I wonder how much more successful I would have been as a swimmer if I had given up grains back then; how much faster I would have recovered from our 3-hour-marathon-sessions in the pool if I wasn't so chronically inflamed by by diet.  It was the 90s, so we spent a lot of time "carbo-loading" before races.  We probably would have done much better if we had eaten primal spaghetti instead.

Last week, I made a huge batch of primal spaghetti for CaveBoy and I to eat for week-night dinners.  Everyone has their favorite meat sauce, and as long as you don't add sugar (don't laugh, there is sugar in a lot of bottled sauces, so I am sure somebody makes it that way...) a nice meat sauce is primal without any modifications.  Here is the sauce I made last week:

Ingredients:
4 lb ground grass fed meat,
1/2 lb ground turkey breast (it was left over in my refrigerator and I didn't want it to go to waste),
1 large bunch of celery, diced
2 large yellow onions, diced
1/2 cup Pesto Diavolo (to add some spice - I only had 1/2 cup left in the jar, but like to use more)
1 small can tomato paste
1 large can diced tomatoes

Brown meat in a large pot, do not drain.  Add diced veggies and cook until tender. Add tomato products. Cover with a splatter screen and simmer for at least one hour. Add salt, pepper, oregano, basil, garlic, to taste. Makes 10 servings.

Here is the nutritional breakdown 

		Cal	Fat	Carb	Fiber	Protein
	4 lb beef	3200	176	0	0	352
	1/2lb turkey	240	2	0	0	56
	Celery	132.6	1.43	24.7	13	5.72
	2 Onions	211.8	0.52	50	6	5.2
	1/2 c. Pesto	150	10	15	5	5
	Tomato Paste	150	0	48	8	16
	Diced Tomato	150	0	36	12	6
	Total	4234.4	189.95	173.7	44	445.92
	Serving	423.44	18.995	17.37	4.4	44.592

I used fitday.com to determine the nutritional values of the ground beef and turkey, celery and onions. I then added that to the information on the packages of the tomato products to determine my total. I divided the totals by ten to determine the per serving nutritional information.  This is a pretty low calorie dinner, especially for CaveBoy, who eats a lot more than me, so I had to be sure to pack him an extra-large lunch.

For the pasta, I used spaghetti squash, which is super easy to prepare.  First, halve the squash (the long way) using a serrated knife.  Be careful. Spaghetti squash can be difficult to cut - like a pumpkin.  Then clean out the seeds and place the squash cut-side down on a baking sheet. Add water to the pan, to about 1/3 the height of the pan lip (so not very much water).  Bake at 400 degrees until the flesh is soft when you poke the skin.  Use a fork to scrape the insides. It looks exactly like angel hair pasta!

Here is the nutritional information for two spaghetti squash:

		Cal	Fat	Carb	Fiber	Protein
	2 Squash	950.9	52.1	128.1	27.5	13.1
	Serving	95.09	5.21	12.81	2.75	1.31

The meal was very tasty, but we found that we're just not "spaghetti people."  We ate it for two dinners and then got bored and portioned the left-overs into freezer bags for another day.  That has been the hardest part about planning ahead for the week. You have to want to eat the food five times.  Primal spaghetti is a family favorite, but CaveBoy and I can only eat it for two meals.  So, it is something I need to make and freeze, or make as a one-time meal on the weekend.