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.

---

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!

Clean Alfredo Sauce

I found this recipe over at Gracious Pantry's blog (<--original recipe and directions).  Chicken and/or shrimp Alfredo were weekly meals in this place.  Once I started my weight loss journey, of course there were some foods I had to cut back on because even 1 serving size was too much.  Needless to say, I was happy to find this recipe to once again be able to enjoy chicken alfredo minus the feeling of "fat-ness" afterwards.

These are some of the ingredients used, minus the garlic powder.

Chopped chicken chicken breasts to add to the pasta

"Bootleg" double boiler

Gracious Pantry's recipe update suggested using a double boiler when cooking the sauce.  This is my "bootleg" version.  All that matters is that it worked! 

Con: scratched my pot, but it's time for new ones anyway :)

As soon as the mixture warmed enough, I used the hand mixer to do most of the work just as the original recipe suggested.

The consistency

Voila!

This sauce recipe makes about 8 servings - 111 per serving.

The total meal came out to 349 calories per serving (a serving size is a cup).  It could have been less calories if I used whole wheat pasta (which I normally do).  Oddly, the store I shopped at did not have any wheat fettuccine and I didn't want to drive from store to store looking for 1 item.

My verdict on the sauce was that it tasted like the store brand, but my husband did not think so.  Chicken Alfredo is near the top of his favorite meals list.  I think if I didn't tell him this was a recipe, he would've eaten it and loved it.  I probably won't be trying this recipe again for a while.