When you switch over to paleo or clean eating or just cutting-the-crap-out lifestyle, there are times that your body smells smells and craves things it used to have. For me, I catch a whiff of garlic and start craving some Italian. Now, I can head down the street and pick up a heaping helping of spaghetti and meatballs and feel like junk for the next 24 hours from eating all that gluten and cheese, or I can stick a bunch of stuff in a crockpot and in about 6 hours have wonderful Italian the way that won’t cause my stomach to turn into knots.

Spicy Italian Stew

Ingredients:

• 1 lb spicy pork sausage (you can get links or make your own if you are concerned about what’s going on in there; to make your own, get a pound of ground pork and add in 1 T garlic powder, 1 tsp onion powder, 1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes, 1 tsp ground sage and salt and pepper). If you have links, remove from casing and crumble up; or simply crumble up
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped up
• A package of mushrooms, sliced
• 1 yellow onion, chopped
• 1 butternut squash, skin discarded, seeds gone and chopped up (or buy the pre-cut up package in your grocery store if you are lazy and your knives are dull!)
• 28 oz can of diced tomatoes, I like the fire roasted kind
• 1/2 cup to a cup (depending on how soupy you want your stew) of chicken stock or broth (whatever you have handy)
• 1 T oregano, dried
• Salt and pepper

Now, get out your crockpot, smile at it and say, “Hello, my love. It’s winter time, your time to shine!” Put the sausage down on the bottom, then add in everything else, put on low and say hello to a nice heaping bowl of Italian stew in about 6 hours! You can top it off with a little shredded parmesan cheese if you want or not, totally up to you. Enjoy!