Munchie Monday: "Poodles" and Zoodles!

Tried something new on Friday after a long week. SPOILER ALERT:  it was not totally successful!

We got home from the office late on Friday but I still wanted to make the zoodles and spaghetti sauce.  I pulled the three zucchini out of the refrigerator to spiralize.  Since I had just purchased a $99 Cuisinart Elemental 13-Cup Bowl Food Processor with Spiralizer Kit, I thought things would be great.  NOT SO.  I don't know how Cuisinart make such a piece of junk.  After multiple tries to put it together following the directions exactly, at the 8th time trying and failing to get the thing to start, I cursed silently to myself (though for some reason Dear One asked me if I was swearing....!  I wasn't but I was thinking mean thought...)  and put that piece of junk equipment back on the table by its box and hauled out my manual spiralizer.

This led to the next issue with supper.  The first zucchini spiralized beautifully.  The second one was okay.  The third one, which was less firm, would not spiralize at all. It just sort of ground off the end.  Rats! So maddening and my blood sugar was dropping like a stone.

Since I really did not think that was enough noodles for our supper,  I took two small russet potatoes and spiralized them, which worked beautifully.

On to the last trial with supper:  I put the zoodles and "poodles" in the saucepan to cook before adding the spaghetti sauce.  After about 5 minutes of cooking which is way more than necessary for the zoodles, and since the poodles were the same size, I thought I would speed up the cooking by tossing in the spaghetti sauce, a little garlic, and some Italian seasoning, and brought it up to a boil.  I let the mess boil for about 5 minutes, then threw in some grated Parmesan cheese, stirred well and was ready to serve it.

In the meantime Dear One, who was also starving (though a bag a "scary corn chips" had sort of blunted his hunger a bit) had wandered through the kitchen.  He looked in the pot and said, "It looks iffy."  Just what I wanted to hear.  Being a little bit snippy-feeling, I told him it was good and he would like it.  And it was what was for supper.

After dropping his bowl off to him where he was sitting on the couch researching something on the tablet, I started eating my bowl. It tasted good.  The only problem was that the poodles were not thoroughly cooked, i.e. not cooked to bits.  I had forgotten that when you have an acidic sauce the other food needs to be completely cooked because the acid stops the cooking.  Or something like that.  I had not problem eating it, however.    Dear One, on the other hand, ate a reasonable amount then told me it was not as bad as he had thought!  Well, at least he ate some, and there was plenty of other food in the house if he was really hungry.

On Saturday I returned the Cuisinart machine to Costco where I had purchased it.