Ok…we have all been there a thousand times. It has been a long day, you are running late, you are STARVING and you wanted dinner an hour ago but you are just walking in the door now so you reach for the quickest thing – pasta and a jar of marinara. What if we told you we had a solution to the need for a quick meal that kicked that pasta to the curb?

The spiralizer (or spiral vegetable slicer…but spiralizer just sounds cooler)! We know our FIT readers have heard all about “zucchini noodles” (aka zoodles) but this machine really makes making them as easy as opening a box of pasta. Hate zucchini? Fine – you can make “pasta” out of all kinds of vegetables. Don’t take our word for it. Take Ali Maffucci’s! She created a whole blog, “Inspiralized” devoted to her love of her spiralizer…and her recipes are amazing!

FITintheCITY tried zoodles with Gwyneth Pal­trow’s recipe for Turkey Meatballs from her cookbook “It’s All Good”.

Ingredients for the Meatballs:

1 small onion, roughly chopped
2 gar­lic cloves, roughly chopped
8 fresh sage leaves
8 large fresh basil leaves
Leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme
Leaves from a 5-inch sprig of rose­mary
¼ cup Ital­ian pars­ley
1 large hand­ful of arugula roughly chopped
1 pound ground turkey
1 tea­spoon coarse sea salt
½ tea­spoon freshly ground black pep­per
4 cups (1 recipe) Go-To Tomato Sauce
(see page 273)
3 table­spoons extra vir­gin olive oil

Com­bine the onion, gar­lic, herbs, and arugula in the bowl of a food proces­sor and pulse until very finely chopped. Trans­fer the mix­ture to a large mix­ing bowl along with the turkey, salt, and pep­per. Use your hands to thor­oughly com­bine all the ingredients, then roll the mix­ture into golf ball–sized meatballs.

Place your Go-To Tomato Sauce in a large pot set over low heat and let it get warm. (FITintheCITY was RUSHED so she used San Marzano Marinara Pasta Sauce but really any jarred sauce will do so long as it has 5 ALL NATURAL ingredients or less and NO ADDED SUGAR).

While the sauce is warm­ing, heat the olive oil in a large non­stick skil­let over medium-high heat. Cook the meat­balls, in batches if nec­es­sary, until they’re browned all over, 2 to 3 min­utes on a side. Trans­fer the browned meat­balls to the sim­mer­ing tomato sauce and par­tially cover the pot. Let the meat­balls cook gen­tly for ½ hour, care­fully stir­ring every now and then to make sure they’re cook­ing evenly.

Then, use this wikihow entry for ways to make zucchini noodles (or use the inspiralized blog for other veggie bases) and top the noodles with the sauce and meatballs. FITintheCITY threw them in boiling water for 1 1/2 minutes…as we said, she was rushed! Worked perfectly.

DELICIOUS!!

What is your favorite spirazalized recipe??