It’s Valentine’s Day and I’m in prep. Soooo…this is fun. Obvi, I recognize Valentine’s Day is a whole thing invented by Hallmark and blah blah blah, but who doesn’t love getting fancy and feeling loved?

My very first Valentine’s Day with Tyler, we didn’t have a ton of money, so he spent all day and cooked me spaghetti, which is legit one of my favorite dishes. He even cooked garlic bread which you could smell down the hallways of the building.  The apartment was tiny; when I arrived it was lit up with tiny candles and had an adorable checkered table cloth. He was dressed up, wearing nice pants and a button down, which also resembled my all time favorite celeb crush, Chris Meloni (OR Elliot Stabler if we must mention him by character). As I think back on this,  I remember feeling so loved, but equally important -how good those MOTHER LOVING CARBS WERE.

It never fails that on Valentine’s Day, I start thinking about spaghetti (oh yeah, and my husband). I would likely murder someone and step over their dead body to go to Cunnetto’s, which literally serves tortellini in a trough like fashion.  But, we’re both cutting and need to make some tough choices. We’ll likely eat sushi, but I can’t get spaghetti out of my head. Although this isn’t as Stabler-esqe as my first Valentine’s Day, it is sure a welcome substitute.

Before we begin, I want to point out a few things that are different about this recipe:

*Notice I used chicken sausage rather than regular. This is due to the *high* fat content in sausage.

*Notice I substituted a sauce with diced tomatoes with LOW SALT.  Check the back of your pasta sauces when you buy them. Check for carbs especially. Sometimes something that boasts “low fat,” can mean “high carb” or “high sugar”

*Remember that Better Than Pasta is an oat flour noodle. Learn more about it in my previous post,  bur this pasta is lean and needs flavor yo! If you can’t get behind Better Than Pasta, opt for a brown rice noodle or whole wheat pasta noodle.

Ingredients