Hi! I’m not sure about you, but getting up on the first Monday after the “spring ahead” daylight savings is just not that fun. Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra daylight at the end of the day, but the first couple of mornings are always hard to adjust to.

Last night I made a delicious dinner, but before I get to that, I have to share how stinkin’ cute my parents are.  It cracks me up because they are SO into my blog, and even though I laugh when they talk about it, it really means the world to me that they take time every day to check it out and that they support me in this. Anyway! My sister was home (so jealous) and I knew my parents were going to cook a favorite meal of hers. As I started on my own dinner, I got the following texts

I asked for the recipe, but mom said “no no no. This is not a healthy meal for your blog”, so I just have to go by pictures… Looks pretty freaking good to me! Like I’ve said before, mom really does make the best chicken parm!

Onto my dinner…

I was looking through my phone the other day and I saw a picture of a chicken meatball dinner that I made a while back.  As soon as I saw that picture, I knew that I was in the mood to make a similar meal tonight.  I have to admit something to you, though… I totally suck at creating recipes. I hate measuring things out when I am making the recipe up as I go along (heck, I don’t even like to measure when I bake, but I know that I have to), so I tried to eyeball and estimate how much of everything I was putting into the meal. Hopefully you’re a similar “ad-lib” cooker!

Spinach & Goat Cheese Chicken Meatballs (served atop spaghetti squash & sautéed veggies)

Ingredients:

For the meatballs-

• 1/2 lb. ground chicken (my sister is making chicken burgers tomorrow, so I saved her 1/2 of the package)
• 1 egg white
• 2-3 tbsp. bread crumbs
• 2-3 tbsp crumbled goat cheese
• 1/2 cup wilted spinach
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tsp basil
• dash of salt & pepper
• 1 small spaghetti squash

For the sautéed veggies-

• 1/4 cup sliced onion
• 1/4 cup sliced green pepper
• 1/8 cup summer squash
• salt, pepper & garlic
• 1 tsp EVOO

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 400*. Cut open, de-seed and boil spaghetti squash. Same way that I explained before. This one was so small that it only took about 10-12 minutes to cook.

2. Mix Meatball ingredients together in a small bowl and use your hands to form small, golf ball sized meatballs. Place on a greased pan (or pizza stone, in my case) and bake for about 20ish minutes (or until they are fully cooked).

3. While the meatballs are in the oven and the spaghetti squash is cooking, cut up your veggies and saute them until everything else is cooked. I cut mine extra thin tonight so that helped to speed up the cooking process.

Once the squash is finished, remove from the water and shred some of it into a bowl. Top with veggies, sauce, and meatballs.

Mmmm! I will say that the meatballs needed a little extra seasoning from what I originally did, so I accounted for that when I was estimating amounts above. The flavor with the goat cheese and spinach, though, was on point! I liked adding the sautéed veggies as they helped to beef up the spaghetti squash.

It’s worth noting that I baked some butternut squash to have on the side as well (holy veggie filled meal!). Nothing fancy, I just cut it up, used some spray Pam, salt & pepper and garlic seasoning and baked at 400* for about 30 minutes.

I used BBQ sauce as my “dipping” sauce of choice (I LOVE sauces. If I could have a meal with 10 different accompanying sauces, I’d be so happy)… wasn’t sure how that would work out, but I actually loved the combo!

Questions for you: Are you a sauce person? Fan of spaghetti squash and chicken meatballs? Takes a little getting used to, but I’m totally hooked now!