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National Spaghetti Day!

Today is National Spaghetti Day!  As someone with Italian blood in him, I’m delighted that one of our most sacred meals has its own special day!

The Beginning

Spaghetti has been a huge part of my life for as long as I can remember.  When I was a kid, spaghetti would often be the go to meal for lunch or dinner.

I’m decent at making spaghetti and sauce myself, but it definitely tastes better when my mom or Nana make it.  They have perfected the craft, and it’s a much more pleasant consumption experience.

My favorite types of spaghetti and pastas are thin spaghetti and penne.  While I think all of it would taste the same without the flavorful seasoned sauce, for some reason, thin spaghetti and penne are really the only two I will eat.  They just hit differently.

Carbs & Protein

While spaghetti is still one of my favorite meals, I have started to eat it less over the past few years.  As many spaghetti consumers may know, being full of carbs, it expands in the stomach.  When I gain weight, the majority of it goes right to my stomach and hips, and unfortunately, spaghetti is a big cause of that as it is a very heavy food.

Since I started personal training last summer, which you can read about here, I’ve been trying to consume less carbs and more protein.  I’ll never permanently cut out carbs, but I definitely can’t eat them as much as I want or used to if I am to lose the pandemic pounds in my stomach and hips that I had started gaining in Fall 2020.  I am trying to reduce the frequency at which I consume spaghetti to at least once every month, and at most, twice a month.

I have been vegan for almost 8 years, and about 2 or 3 years into my vegan journey, I started adding vegan meatballs into my sauce for protein so that my meal wouldn’t only consist of carbs. I’ve also recently discovered a high protein pasta which tastes really good.  Maybe a year or two after adding the meatballs, I began incorporating either one of two vegetables into my sauce.  Those vegetables would be my top two favorites: spinach and broccoli.  The addition of the meatballs and vegetables (and mandatory seasonings of course!) have made my meals even more scrumptious than they already were!

Cook Up Some Spaghetti!

So to all my spaghetti enthusiasts, make sure for lunch or dinner today, you whip up a nice, delicious pot of pasta of your choice, and enjoy your afternoon or evening meal!  And I also wish you all a happy, successful 2023.

-Therell