Paleo Pad Thai

When I was prepping for my Whole30 one of the recipes that immediately caught my eye was a beautiful Pad Thai made with spaghetti squash from Clothes Make the Girl. Melissa Joulwan, the brain behind that website as well as the Well Fed books, has this mouth-watering photo of pad thai that looks amazing, paleo or not.

The struggle with making pad thai approved for the whole30 is getting rid of the peanuts in the peanut sauce. She did it through the use of sunflower butter, which I bought specifically so I could make this recipe. Turns out I like it on celery as well, but I digress. I finally got to making this today and it was a definite success. I'm tempted to try it with homemade cashew nut butter, but I'm not certain my food processor can handle it.

The first step to this recipe is making the "Sunshine Sauce." It was totally simple to make and I got to use my cute little shot glass measuring cup that just makes me happy.

The sunshine sauce is really simple to make, especially since everything goes in the food processor. Gotta love that! I added half the amount of red pepper flakes and no cayenne pepper since I don't like going crazy with spice. I figured you can always add more later. I also tasted it and felt that the coconut milk flavor was a bit too pronounced for me so I added a bit more sunflower butter.

For today, I decided to leave out the chicken and utilize the 2 eggs as my protein for the meal. I did cut the rest of the ingredients in half though since I was making a single portion. I had roasted the spaghetti squash last night, so it was a breeze to just pull things out of the fridge.

I've made egg pancakes with soy sauce before when I've made fried rice, so the concept with the eggs wasn't foreign to me. Seriously, if you haven't tried eggs with coconut aminos or soy sauce, it's an amazing transformation. I have a recipe for fried rice with cauliflower rice as well that I am seriously going to have to try, but that's another post.

A quick cook in the skillet and mix it all together and you have a beautiful and delicious dish.

I added some raw cashews and a squeeze of lime juice on top and it complimented it perfectly. Cilantro would have been great, but I don't have any in the house right now.

The cashews are why I think cashew butter would totally work and I saw a comment on the Clothes Make the Girl blog that says cashew or almond butter would work in this sauce. I am going to have to try that.

So this was a fabulous lunch that doesn't leave you feeling gross after. I've gotten in nearly 2 cups of vegetables and good proteins and fats. Definitely a keeper!