Spaghetti with sausages and sneaky mum's sauce

 

Giving children vegetables can be a challenge My eldest doesn't like eggplant or bell pepper and when he was little I used to turn the bell pepper into a pasta sauce and eggplant into a dip.  Another thing I would advise is they have to see the parent eat the vegetables, which means family mealtimes with a healthy balanced meal.

   Apart from children, even grown-ups can be quite picky when it comes to vegetables. Yes, it looks very nice on Instagram, a colourful bowl of vegetables but I do wonder if that bowl actually gets eaten or if that was just a post to get more likes. We are living in a world where the number of social media likes is more important than anything else. 

So before I go out of hand and start thrashing the social media, let us talk about today's recipe. My sneaky mum's sauce is an old recipe, one I created when my second one had a picky eating stage when it came to certain vegetables. I used to make a batch of the sauce and freeze it in small containers, just thaw in the microwave or on the stovetop when needed. This time I used frozen broccoli as the broccoli we got was more yellow than a lovely green. You can even use about 1/4 cup of the frozen broccoli mix, which contains broccoli cauliflower and carrot. You can use, baby spinach even.

I  remembered seeing this spaghetti with threaded sausage video on YouTube and wondered if this would be a great kid-pleaser. Yes there is sausage (gasp!)  

Anyway,  back to the recipe. I  wanted to create a dish where both parties are happy,  meaning the child and the parent. Mum is happy as the child is eating the vegetables and child is happy I mean which child doesn't like sausages!.

Yield: 3

Author: Nammi

Spaghetti with sausages and sneaky mum's sauce

Ingredients

• 3-4 sausages ( I usually use doux or Gills brand)
• 200g- 250g spaghetti 
• 1/2 cup sneaky mum's tomato  sauce
• a handful of grated parmesan cheese
• some fresh basil (optional)

Instructions

1. Cut the sausage into bite-size pieces.
2. Break the spaghetti in half and thread each into the sausage piece, about 5 to 6 in each sausage piece.
3. Bring a pan with water, generously salted, to boil, add the spaghetti and sausage into the pot and cook until the pasta is al dente.
4. Drain, reserving ¼ cup of the pasta water.
5. Place it back into the pot along with about  1/2  cup of my sneaky mum’s pasta sauce.
6. Stir by adding some of the reserved pasta water to loosen up the sauce.
7. Switch off, stir in parmesan cheese if you have any, and some fresh basil leaves.

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