I personally think the best kinds of recipes are the ones you throw together without a plan and then realize it’s so good that you have to write it down so you remember how to make it again, and that’s what this is! I’m a huge fan of a delicious, slow-simmered meat sauce on spaghetti or zucchini noodles (or over rice, or with a fried egg, or some greens…really I’ll put meat sauce on or under anything), but sometimes I don’t have the time, energy, or ingredients to make it happen.

This “sauce” has like 6 ingredients and took me 20 minutes to whip up. I spiralized a couple big zucchini and tossed the noodles in a skillet, threw them in a couple bowls, and topped it with my quick meat sauce and some fresh herbs from my patio. It was a quick, easy, and delicious Monday night dinner when I otherwise might have ordered takeout.

Ingredients:

• 2 large zucchini, spiralized

• 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil

• 3/4 of a white onion, diced

• 2 cloves of garlic, minced

• 1 pound of ground beef

• 1 1/2 tablespoons of tomato paste

• About 1/2 cup of water or broth (chicken, beef, or veggie would work)

• A handful of cherry tomatoes, if you’ve got ‘em

• A couple tablespoons of chopped green onion and fresh basil (optional but recommended)

• Salt and pepper, to taste

• Parmesan cheese for topping (optional but also recommended)

Instructions:

1. In a large pan, heat olive oil and sauté onion over medium heat. Cook for 4-5 minutes and add the garlic. Season with salt and pepper. (While that’s going on you can salt your zoodles—I recommend putting them in a colander and letting them sit with a generous amount of salt on them for at least 10 minutes.)

2. Add the beef and cook until browned, using a wooden spoon to break beef apart into smaller chunks. Raise heat slightly and cook for 2-3 minutes. Pour the water in and add tomato paste, stirring well to combine until smooth.

3. Add about half of the green onion and basil. Toss in the cherry tomatoes and allow them to cook until some of them start to wilt or burst. Season everything with salt and pepper. Remove from pan and set aside.

4. Rinse the zucchini noodles and add to the pan. Cook over medium heat for 5-7 minutes, or until cooked to your liking (I prefer mine a bit on the underdone side so they’re still nice and crunchy).

5. Transfer zoodles to bowls, top with sauce, and finish with some Parmesan cheese and the remaining green onion and basil. Serve immediately.

Like I mentioned earlier, you could serve this with regular pasta, stir it into rice, or even eat it plain (which is what I did for breakfast yesterday)—it’s pretty chunky so it’s not soupy or super saucy to eat on its own.

This morning I woke up early, after a night of nursing and infant Tylenol and rocking a teething baby. Usually if Sophie wakes up early I'll change her, feed her, and put her back down and we all sleep another hour or two, but today I felt simultaneously restless and well-rested, so going back to sleep felt risky--I really hate trying to sneak in an early morning nap and waking up feeling worse than I did when I was awake earlier.

We've been leaving Ender out at night instead of putting him in his crate, and when I returned to our bedroom he had snuck in from across the hall and curled up into my warm spot in the bed. He was sleeping with his eyes tight so shut, a thing he does when he feels like he can finally relax. "The baby's not crying, dad's right here next to me, mom is back...ahhhh"--I can practically hear it in the voice we do for him.

He is definitely not getting as much exercise as he needs these days. We hired a dog walker a few times a week which helps, but I have this annoying thing where I feel like I should be able to do it all. Sophie is getting too big to wear while I walk him and I haven't mastered the leash and stroller combination yet, so if it doesn't happen before she wakes up or after she goes to bed, he and I don't usually go on walks together anymore, which makes me sad--that used to really be our thing.

So I leashed him up, put on a sweater, and snuck out of a sleepy house with my dog--into the quiet, early morning; sun still not quite up yet, cars still in the driveways, misty haze hovering, chilly air fragrant with eucalyptus.

We moved into a new house two months ago, and even though it's only a mile away from the other one, the entire vibe is different. Orange trees along the sidewalks have been traded for figs and apples, and I always walk Ender down a long road that's lined with eucalyptus trees--a plant with a look and scent that bring me back to being a kid in Half Moon Bay for chilly summers with my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Sometimes you can't smell them very well, but when the air is cold and wet (the way it so often is in the late summer and early fall here in the Bay Area), you can't ignore it.

I pulled my sweater closer around me and started thinking about how two years ago we were on the road, leaving hot and muggy North Carolina and passing through Tennessee, Alabama, and Kansas, before waking up in chilly Colorado on the first day of autumn, then continuing on through Utah, bundling up for another early morning walk in 40-degree Lake Tahoe, and finally arriving in Silicon Valley. It was such an adventure, just me and Rob and Ender. It literally felt like we were traveling toward our new life and a new season, as every state got chillier and chillier and we rearranged our luggage, trading our shorts for sweaters.

And now Sophie is here, our next great adventure, and I'm beside myself with excitement and a little nostalgia as her first autumn approaches along with her first birthday. Life in California is so new to us still sometimes, but I have childhood memories here that run deep.

I can already picture her toddling around with a little pom-pom hat on her strawberry blonde head--riding a train on a farm, reaching out her tiny hand at a petting zoo, picking out a pumpkin in Half Moon Bay on a late September afternoon; feeling that coastal breeze on her little face and smelling the eucalyptus in the air like I did before her for years and years and years.

This post is sponsored by EverlyWell. Get 15% off your purchase with the code FRECKLED

It's been a while since I talked about what my diet looks like these days (the last time I wrote an "update" was in 2015--I still wasn't sure about barre and now I swear by it so much that I trained to be an instructor!), and I wanted to share because I really changed the way I thought about food and nutrition when I was pregnant and right after Sophie was born. I've had a lot of this post saved as a draft for quite some time, so I was even more excited to share when EverlyWell reached out and wanted to know if I'd be interested in trying their food sensitivity test. 

As some of you may remember, I found that a lot of the foods that used to bother me didn't bother me anymore while I was pregnant, and I definitely took advantage of that. Morning sickness had me eating crackers and toast around the clock, and I didn't have the stomach pain or headaches that I used to when I would eat gluten.

Since I'm still nursing Sophie, I decided not to worry too much about my diet and continue to eat things that kept me full, happy, and feeling good; but around the 7 or 8 month of post-partum life I was starting to get headaches and stomach pain again. I don't know the science behind it or if it's even real, but I've heard from a lot of other gluten sensitive people who said the same thing happened to them--they stopped feeling the side effects of the gluten while they were pregnant--so I started to wonder if maybe my sensitivities were returning as my hormones shift and my body finally returns to it's pre-baby state. Either way, I was curious to take a food sensitivity test and see what came back as possible reactive foods in my diet. 

When I'm done breastfeeding I'll most likely return to a more grain-free/low-carb style of eating (I'd like to lose these pesky 15-20 pounds I still have hanging out from my pregnancy but that's a whole other post), but until then I just want to start feeling better by eliminating some of the foods that may be giving me migraines, joint pain, and the occasional stomach issue.

Considering the fact that it involved an at-home finger prick, the EverlyWell test was everything I needed it to be--non-intimidating, straightforward, and neatly packaged into a cute and simple design. I was definitely nervous to use the lancets for the blood sample and ended up having Rob do it for me, but I promise that it was absolutely no big deal (this is coming from someone who has absolutely passed out at the doctor's office before). It was really nice to be able to do it in the comfort of my own home, on a weekend, while watching trashy TV and drinking coffee.

After you collect the blood sample you just fold it up and throw it in the pre-paid envelope and stick it in your mailbox! My results came back super fast (by email, which is nice since I was out of town at the time) and I was really surprised to see that I didn't have any foods in the "highly reactive" category. My top three sensitivities are to green beans, mozzarella, and yogurt, and after that in the mild sensitivities are the things to which I always suspected I had intolerances: gluten, some dairy, wheat, etc.

What I got out of this test, more than just the results, is a better understanding of food sensitivities and how they work. I've always felt like my intolerances sort of "build up" over time, i.e. I don't immediately feel sick after eating bread or dairy but after eating it regularly for a week or two I usually end up with a migraine or joint pain. I was sort of relieved to learn that this is exactly how it can work--I don't have an allergy, which is serious and comes on fast, it's just a sensitivity and I can make the decision to eliminate certain foods (or not!). 

I've actually decided to quit messing with gluten-free bread and pasta and just stay away from the real thing unless I decide that it's really worth it. Obviously everyone's sensitivities are different, but one awesome bowl of spaghetti now and then isn't going to mess me up, so it's kind of freeing to know that I can control how I feel day to day and then make those "special occasion" sort of exceptions.

I think that's about it! Please let me know if you have any questions about the test or anything food related at all! I'm so happy I took this test and am so grateful to EverlyWell for sponsoring this post! If you're interested in taking one of their tests, use the code FRECKLED for 15% off your purchase!