It's kinda fall, right? It's been a little chilly the past few days (I mean, its 85 out today but we had a good low temp run this weekend), football is back on, my entire apartment smells like pumpkins and apple pie - I'm forcing it, but its fall.
The S E C O N D I feel a breeze, its all over. I'm lighting candles, I'm dressing in debatably stylish rags (Rob's argument is "why do you spend money to look homeless"), and I almost immediately turn into Ina Garten. As werewolves come out with the moon, I turn into Ina Garten the first night I don't have to sleep with the AC on. Fall comfort food is my absolute favorite & I can't wait to share all of my potentially coma-inducing game day snacks as well as the fancier stuff that I feel like I'm disrespecting by serving on a coffee table.
Fall is both a blessing and a curse because I finally *want* to eat again, but my body doesn't necessarily need to be pounding pasta and chili every night (womp womp). It's hard to snuggle up on the couch with a salad when its cold out & even harder to want the vegetable platter no one really asked for at the tailgate when meatball subs are an option. I have willpower, but not that much willpower. I don't even will that, honestly. I do not will on myself eating raw vegetables when it's cold out and everyone around me is eating carbohydrates. I love myself too much for that.
I'm not here to tell you how to live your life at a tailgate. Last year I showed up to Rob's brother's homecoming game so drunk from already being at my own homecoming tailgate for 4 hours that I didn't even say hi to anyone when I got there. I just rolled directly out of my minivan Uber to the stash of cookies Rob's mom hides under their tailgate table. Rob found me because a freshman mother was voicing her concern upon seeing a clearly inebriated grown woman, hunched over gollum-style, eating every snack she could find stashed away at his parents' tent. Quite the visual but that's about par for the course for me at football games. God love freshman parents. I've been here for 5 years now, ma'am. I am always like this. No need to worry.
Typically even on the weekends I'm a liiiiiiiittle more conscious of my health, especially now that I'm out of college, but we all need to allow ourselves 2 dozen cookies and leftover halloween candy sometimes, right? hahaaaaa.
My problem when its comfort food season isn't really "oh no, I can't eat it until the weekend," it's more "how can I eat this food when it's Wednesday night & I know I'm going to not be eating the healthiest food this weekend so I should probably eat extra healthy this week?" I've found that for me, and I am in no position to be giving nutritional advice, I am less of a little snack gremlin on the weekends when I'm not exclusively eating chicken, veggies, and rice all week. Call it flex dieting or whatever you may, I just feel like I set myself up for a bad time when I cut all week preparing for the weekend & then show up starving at a tailgate or a wine tasting or any other party that even has just a plain bag of Tostitos scoops at my disposal.
In order to avoid, or at least minimize, my Monday morning scaries (i.e, that awful feeling Monday morning when you're trying to wake up to go to the gym but you can physically feel every milligram of sodium in your body weighing you down) I've started doing one or two "fun" meals during the week that aren't totally unhealthy and are actually fun to cook. Rob and I love cooking together so its nice to come home from work looking forward to making something we'll both enjoy, versus standing in a sweaty kitchen together poking a chicken breast with a meat thermometer every 3 minutes to see if its done yet.
Over the weekend I forced Rob into Trader Joe's before the Pat's game to get some food for the week and some snacks for the game (less healthy on the snacks for the game but its easy to convince yourself Organic Trader Joe's queso is somehow healthier than others). It's always a big win for me when we get to go to Trader Joe's because Rob hates it & I don't have a driver's license so I'm typically at the mercy of his grocery preference. As we dug through the overwhelming crowded freezer section, throwing elbows at every Harvard kid also reaching for the last pack of gluten free toaster waffles, I found GLUTEN FREE CAULIFLOWER GNOCCHI. OH MY GODDDDDD. I am the first one to try the veggie alternative to any carbohydrate and I cannot believe I have lived my entire life, up until last night, completely ignorant to the existence of cauliflower gnocchi. I have plenty of super unhealthy gnocchi recipes I will bless you all with in the future, but this is weeknight gnocchi. "I just went to the gym and I'm hungry but need to still be healthy" gnocchi. Skin-knee gnoc-chi.I had my glass of merlot with dinner and that included was still only around 500 calories.
The cauliflower gnocchi is 75% cauliflower mixed with cassava and rice flour - totally gluten free and it somehow doesn't taste like cauliflower much, if at all. The first bite I took, I never would have guessed it wasn't normal gnocchi. Definitely recommend thawing them out and then pan sautéing them rather than using the microwave. They crisp up a little, which I actually like, and stay firm rather than turning to mush. We mixed the gnocchi with Trader Joe's garlic chicken sausage (so good), tomato basil sauce, a tinyyy bit of parmesan (full disclosure - a tiny bit of parmesan to me might be a lot to you, idk) and basil - SO good. Per serving it was only about 400 calories and neither one of us were hungry after. If I had more of it, I would be eating variations of this meal for the rest of the week.
It's so nice to have cute dinners like this during the week. I'm a very big on making meals that have an atmosphere or a mood associated with them (i.e cozy comfort food, dur) and its great having a few comfy nights a week to get snuggled, serve something you put effort into, and not be eating just to eat. Makes me feel very grown up and European. It's called elegance, bitch. I exude it. Especially living with your significant other, I think it's important to make the effort to share a meal with each other that's more than just scarfing down meal prepped vegetables on the couch while watching Arrested Development (though sometimes that's just what you need, ya know?) Taking the time to make a cute meal in the middle (or beginning, lol) of the week is a great way to move away from your routine without throwing you off, and its fun! I find that if I just come home from work and throw myself on the couch with whatever's in the fridge, I'm a lot less productive at night than when I cook something.
If you're trying to get really creative, or want to screw the healthy part and just go on in, I'd definitely recommend trying a sage-butter sauce (I make a STUPID good spinach gnocchi with sage-butter sauce that I learned from Rob's dad), parmesan spinach, lemon-thyme, or my favorite that I make with my mom, butternut squash and sage sauce.
I'm going to be posting more fall recipes (and probably more gnocchi recipes because the only thing I like more than pasta and potatoes is both together in perfect harmony). Definitely recommend trying out the cauliflower even if you have to plead with your significant other to go to his least favorite place to get it an hour before a Pat's game.