Creamy Pumpkin Spaghetti With Garlic Kale Recipe

comment icon 187 more comments Oh my gosh, it’s somehow already sweet, cozy November. It was like Sage just finished up being a ghost for Halloween while I took pictures and ate five million KitKats and then BOOM. Just like that. November and all its chilly pre-winter feelings were just HERE. Do you have candles burning right now? Please tell me you have candles burning. I know November can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, including but not limited to over-use of bootie slippers even when it’s not necessary (but obviously it IS necessary), pre-holiday ordering of minty mochas with pre-holiday listening to Christmas music – you think I don’t know you BUT I KNOW YOU, more and more and more candles, and a three second crush on the first supercold days of winter because the whole hats-and-mittens vibe really does start out being really adorable and fun. Key words: start out. For my fellow Hungry Hungry Pumpkin Eaters, November means that we have entered the season of the year when it’s more than okay to embrace mashups of flavors, textures, and colors in recipes like Pumpkin Spaghetti with Garlic Kale. 😍 –> See also: Dinner Every Night for the Foreseeable Future. And let’s be honest – that’s why I really love November.

How To Make Our Pumpkin Spaghetti:

This pumpkiny spaghetti sauce is totally not my genius. More like it’s inspired by my very regular laziness. I saw a jar of pumpkin sauce at Target when I was grocery shopping and it looked like a great way to NOT really have to fully make dinner from scratch and to create opportunities for us to eat pasta all in one fell swoop. Tried it, loved it, read the list of ingredients, and attempted to recreate it. Pumpkin and tomato together in one sauce? Slow down, friends. I had the saaame questions and concerns. Don’t let the weirdness on paper deter you. This has been one of my favorite fall meals hands-down and you KNOW I’m serious about my sauces. FYI: we first made this with spaghetti. Like, noodles. YUM. Then we made it with spaghetti SQUASH to be healthy, which was healthy and a little bit less perfect because, um, it’s spaghetti squash. And it gets watery and sad, unlike real carb noodles which love you truly madly deeply with their chewy-soft, sauce-soaking texture. So we made it ahhhgain with noodles. And it’s going to be pretty hard for me to go back to any sort of vegetable noodle situation after how hard I fell in love with the carb-sauce combo here (but I will confess that since the sauce is so good, it really does make a great pair for veg noodles of all types). Okay now crew. Let’s keep those candles burning, put on the bootie slippers (already wearing! you know me, always one step ahead! 🏆), and enjoy yoself a plate of steamy noodles with luscious pumpkin tomato sauce, spicy ground turkey, a dusting of Manchego, and a side of sautéed garlic kale. November is the ultimate.