Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Pasta, Salad and a recipe



In an effort to eat healthier, I'm trying to revise recipes for meals that my family regularly eats.  The top picture is a basic salad with greens, sliced tomatoes and onions but the difference is I added a piece of roasted eggplant.  Normally I would have the eggplant as a side dish but incorporated it into the salad.  Then I made a berry vinaigrette dressing using a recipe I found online.  Basically you add equal parts olive oil (approx. 1/4 to 1/2 cup) and balsamic vinegar.  Add 2 tsp Dijon mustard and about 1/4 cup agave sweetener.  I have never used agave before but now I think I'll be using it in place of the white refined sugar for any future cooking/baking.  Then if you have raspberries or strawberries (we had a cup of raspberries), add that to the mixture and blend all in a blender.    The recipe says to add a pinch of salt and pepper but I didn't and it tasted just fine.

Then I made pasta using whole wheat instead of the white enriched spaghetti I always have.  I'm not quite sure about the texture - the noodles seemed a little harder than what I'm used to so maybe I need to cook it longer?  And instead of having meat sauce on the top, I tried it plain with slices of zucchini and a handful of (canned) sweet corn with a little olive oil mixed in.  My husband ate his pasta with a topping of plain yogurt and liked it.   I think next time I'm going to try topping the pasta with pepperoni or a few slices of grilled chicken breast but I missed the sauce so I might have to add a little.

The pictures were taken with my iPhone.  I think they came out okay but I just found a tutorial online so I'm going to work on my iPhone photo skills now.....have a good day!

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