When you are a mom, you find yourself watching and doing things more geared toward your kids. I play with toys/video games and watch shows on Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network.
Sometimes my food choices are also a little child-like, especially when the ideas come courtesy of a character from one of these shows. Just check out this crazy looking plate.Today's veggie-based meal is none other than a raw version of Spencer Shay's spaghetti tacos. They are a specialty he serves up to his better known sister, Carly (as in "i-Carly," the name of the show), as well as to impress (more like persuade her into giving up a secret recipe) his date.
Spencer's original version is not raw, nor vegan, but still a fun concept. He just plated his standard spaghetti and meat sauce in those crunchy yellow taco shells. You just pick them and eat 'em.
I had meant to make them more realistic and colorful with some corn or yellow squash tortillas made in my dehydrator, but was too hungry to wait for them. Instead, I made a fresher, quicker meal, using large romaine leaves to cradle my zucchetti.
For those of you who are new to my blog, "zucchetti" is just my term for spiralized zucchini "noodles." Rather than mixing it with my mock "meat" sauce, I opted to keep things a little less soupy by stuffing the romaine "tacos" with a layer of the zucchetti and just topping it with the chunky filling (a combination of walnut "meat," almonds, flax, sun dried tomatoes, diced fresh tomato, mushrooms, garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, sea salt, pepper, poultry seasoning and some herbs de Provence). Then, just like at the taco bar (my mom always would put out small bowls of toppings so we could customize our meal), I jazzed them up with a bit more diced tomato, baby spinach leaves, avocado (they just wouldn't be tacos without it) and shredded carrot "cheese."When loaded like this, they look kind of messy. Could this really be a hand-held meal?
As you can see, they can be picked up and eaten like the real deal. And, they don't shatter like their crispy predecessor. Nice :-)
