Between a weekend away and normal life mess (read: two people who like to eat but not washing dishes), our house was getting pretty messy this week.  But then it got sunny, and it turned into my mid-week day off.  There are some advantages to Saturdays at work.

And yesterday, I made a discovery.  We have these two giant plants by our driveway entry.  Last year, I had no idea what these plants were.  Yesterday, I saw flowers:

They’re forsythia plants!!  They’re some of my favorite plants in spring, and soon ours will be covered in small yellow flowers.  That’s a good discovery for a Tuesday evening.

I followed up the garden happies with some cooking.  Today, after I destroyed 3/4 of my leftovers, it looked like this:

Is it weird that I find a messy plate of spaghetti squash and tomato sauce beautiful?  I even like the tarnished fork tines and the one hiding meatball.

Whether you’re a fan of half-finished plates of food or not, I highly recommend this recipe.  I wanted to make turkey meatballs and spaghetti squash, and I decided to go with a very consistent recipe source–Giada.

She uses half ground turkey, half turkey Italian sausage, and that combo gives this dinner so much flavor!  There are tons of other tasty things mixed into the turkey mixture, too.  Mmm.  I’m a fan of baked meatballs.  I’ve made stovetop meatballs, and even though they’re equally delicious, they seem to take a fair bit of extra time.  There’s also a higher risk of your meatballs disintegrating into teeny tiny pieces if you go the stovetop route.  So baked.  Baked is the way to go.  The sauce is pretty great, too.

Now on this sunny day off, I’m babysitting a turkey on the smoker outside.  Fingers crossed on that one.  Scott is usually the turkey chef/babysitter in our family.  I’m hoping for crispy skin and smokey goodness.  Beginner’s luck?  Here’s hoping.

(P.S.  The option to add links isn’t working that well at the moment, but you can get to the two main Giada recipes by clicking on my picture above.  You can find tons of good recipes to help you roast spaghetti squash by searching online.  Martha Stewart’s recipe for roasted spaghetti squash is surprisingly simple and works just fine.)