Zucchini Spaghetti with Cous Cous, White Beans and Creamy Garlic Sauce

Wow, that's a long name for a recipe!  Maybe I should call it.... "warm cous cous salad with garlic sauce, zucchini, and beans." hmm... still too long.  "warm cous cous salad with garlic sauce"?  How about, "Some stuff in a bowl for dinner?"

well, anyway, here's what I did.

Ben wanted zucchini spaghetti for dinner, but we just had regular spaghetti AND macaroni noodles with chili in the last two days.  I was red-sauced-out! Then I was trying to figure out what might complement the zucchini, and make it into a complete, filling meal.  Hmm, there was cous cous in the cabinet. That's easy to make, and super quick... I almost just left it at that, but then I decided, one more addition might be good.  I have beans cooked and frozen in 2 cup containers just for days like this!  I grabbed one out, and I had the meal put together. 

Now, what to top it with?  I thought of garlic cream sauce, because it would be like spaghetti-- Alfredo.  So I whipped up some of that:

4 cloves garlic
1/4 cup butter
2 cups milk (i used unsweetened coconut)
salt
pepper
kelp powder (We've been using this to get iodine in our diet since we don't use iodized salt)
basil
thyme
oregano
arrowroot powder (maybe 1 TBS or less) (can also use cornstarch, if you're wondering what arrowroot powder is, or just don't have any.  It's a thickener.)

I cooked the garlic for less than a minute in the butter, stirred in everything else, brought it to a boil to thicken.  Ta-da!  Garlic Cream Sauce.  (And that sounds so fancy! At least, in my mind it does.)

Okay, so this is what I thought this dish would be: kind of reminicent of a summer salad, with a light coating of sauce, but all ingredients would be kind of separated-- think pasta salad.

This is how the dish actually ended up: Almost like cous cous garlic soup. It was mushy, which I wasn't thrilled with, but it tasted delicious. The kids didn't like it, though.  So, there is that consideration.  Chris and I enjoyed it.  But, we did NOT enjoy the cranky hungry kids we had later in the evening.  :-) I think, if I make this again, I will try less sauce.  Maybe a different grain might work better.  I don't know.  What are your thoughts?

How would you improve this recipe?