Whole Wheat Pasta = Great for Living Alone
Living alone and cooking usually sucks because recipes have you make 6-12 servings and you end up having tons of leftovers that go to waste (or you force yourself to eat the leftovers and get so tired of the food that you'll never make it again!)
Up until a few weeks ago, my diet consisted of cereal and microwavable dinners for just that reason. But now I'm experimenting with fresh cooked meals that won't leave me with tons of leftovers.
That's one reason I love pasta. You can make as much or as little of it as you need. Feel like a half serving? Go for it, just measure it out and bam, there's your half serving. The rest of the pasta can stay in its packaging for whenever else you feel like eating pasta again. Also, whole wheat pasta is actually pretty healthy, as long as you eat the right portion size. I'm in love with Whole Foods' 365 Organic whole wheat pastas. Here's some pics of what I've made thus far...
1/2 serving of the rolly kind of pasta with 365 Organic fat free tomato sauce (35 calories a serving... I used a half serving of it since I'm not a big tomato sauce fan, but it's much healthier than the cream alternative I used to use). I also fried some pre-flavored tofu in 1 tsp of oil (it got nice and crunchy... prob overcooked) and threw that in for protein and texture. It was pretty good.
A week or so ago I made another pasta dish with linguine, steamed broccoli & cauliflower and fried tofu. I added a little salt and pepper and it tasted amazing!
(Note: I made two servings of this because I cooked dinner for me & my boyfriend.)
Got any other suggestions for quick and healthy pasta meals?
3 comments:
THAT strikes a chord......
Living alone, I eat a LOT of
spaghetti. Prep is easy, I love it,
it's healthy, it can be dressed up
a variety of ways, and clean-up
is a snap....I don't have a Whole
Foods in town (lucky for me,
otherwise I'd surely weigh 50
pounds more than I do, LoL) but
I go back and forth between
regular spaghetti (good) and whole
grain (better). I haven't done
much with other types of pasta,
but if I ever get tired of
spaghetti and angel hair, I
have a wide variety to choose from,
I know.
allrecipes.com has a calculator button that you can click to alter the recipe servings. So if the original recipe serves 10, you can change it so that the ingredient list now accounts for 1 serving.
My favorite way to eat pasta is with left over curries (instead of a tomato sauce).
Got pasta recipes???? Are you kidding?? :)
Cook up some orzo, mix while hot with a small bit of feta cheese. Mix with grape tomatoes, chopped mint, fine chopped cucumber and red onion, salt and pepper and a bit of lime juice. Perfect salad on a hot day (I'm guessing SF has more of those than your native NJ) or even a great meal anytime.
Saute some spinach with a bit of garlic and olive oil. Mix with al-dente linguine and maybe sun-dried tomatoes chopped a bit. Drizzle some lemon-juice on top, add salt-pepper to taste and voila!!!
At its very basic, you can make pesto at home (so YOU control the oil/fat AND quantity) - here's a fun snack. Make pesto (olive oil, lightly-toasted pine-nuts (these store for a good few months in the fridge so you don't have to use them all at once), garlic, lots of fresh basil, fresh or dry parsley and a bit of parmesan cheese). You can now flavor the following with the pesto:
1. Pizza - use store-bought bases - you even get them in wheat, individual sizes. Spread some pesto on top, add sun-dried tomatoes, any kind of cheese, any kinds of toppings. You now have pesto pizza.
2. Mix gnocchi or some smaller pasta-shapes with the pesto for an instant meal.
3. This one is my fav for a party too - Ritz crackers, topped with pieces of sun-dried tomatoes, pesto and a bit of feta cheese - make excellent finger-food.
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