Penne Pasta Meal Ideas

The whole point of me displaying what I eat is to give others trying to lose weight an idea of "how" I ate and to show how you have to go back to the basics.  Remember that processed foods are created for our convenience, money-wise and time-wise.  I'm not saying I didn't eat processed food and that I don't now (because I do), but more clean eating versus the processed stuff has long term benefits. Everything in moderation.  What's clean eating?  Clean eating is eating foods that are as close to its natural state as possible.  Two good ways to tell if what you're eating is processed:

1. Did you get that item from the inside aisles of the grocery store? Yes? Chances are it's processed
2. Not trying to insult ones intelligence, but can you pronounce the ingredients on the back of that box? No? Chances are it's processed.

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I'm still in the progress of finding low calorie, clean recipes that can become staples in my lunch and dinner rotation. I found this recipe for penne pasta with spinach (I've been eating a lot of spinach lately) at DPrincess28's blog, Protecting Your Crown & Glory.  You can find exact directions and other details there cause I'm too lazy to do it.  

It turned out well and she was right, this is a fiber loaded dish so beware!  

Here's the ingredients and calorie breakdown

250 calories per serving

I cooked more pasta than the first recipe called for, but I remembered there was another recipe I wanted to try.  I found this one for broccoli & penne pasta salad at Clean Eating Chelsey's blog.  I didn't follow her recipe exactly.  I used the frozen broccoli stir-fry I had already.  Also, I ran out of Italian dressing, so I used what was leftover and a little raspberry vinaigrette.

The raspberry vinaigrette was okay, but I have a feeling the Italian dressing would of tasted better.  

165 calories per serving

Now I've found two EASY, meatless staples to add.  I liked that both meals were meatless because I've decided to incorporate at least one meatless night a week.  I enjoyed both, while my husband is being a fatty lately and didn't want to try either. Oh well, more for me!