Easiest Crock Pot Dinner....ever.

I actually made this dish last week, and just never got around to posting it. I am loving substituting vegetables for noodles and after the success of the sweet potato noodles, I made "spaghetti" and turkey meatballs with spaghetti squash. I got the idea to do it in the slow cooker from this recipe that I pinned on Pinterest. It was pretty quick to throw together, but I did do most of the prep the night before.

The spaghetti sauce I made using parsley, onion and lots of garlic; along with a can of crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, crushed red pepper, oregano and basil. I threw all the ingredients in a large ziplock bag and put that in the fridge overnight.

The meatballs I made from ground turkey, with one egg (I then threw in some panko, because the egg made the meat too wet...), and spices (oregano, basil, crushed red pepper, garlic). Once I shaped the meatballs I put them in a flat layer in a ziplock bag and also put that in the freezer overnight.

Originally I planned to cook the entire squash in the slow cooker....but either I had a mutant squash that was huge, or my slow cooker is smaller because the entire squash wouldn't fit. I attempted to cut the squash into fours, but it still wouldn't fit. So I opted to just cook one half in the slow cooker with the meatballs and tomato sauce - and cooked the other half in the microwave. Honestly, spaghetti squash is pretty quick and easy to make in the microwave...so the slow cooker is a bit unnecessary. In fact, if I were to make this again, I think I would just do the sauce and meatballs in the slow cooker and cook the squash in the microwave. There was not really any benefit to doing it in the slow cooker, and, it actually fell apart a little -- we each had one bite that had some of the tough squash skin.

Once everything was cooked, I scraped out all the "spaghetti" from the squash, and threw some of the sauce and meatballs on top. Super healthy. Super yummy. And ready to go as soon as I walk into the door after the gym - yay!!