Fusilli with broccolini and mushrooms is a vegan (without parmesan) or vegetarian delight. Using Carba Nada pasta means that the carbs and calories are lower which means that I can have more pasta with less guilt!
While the pasta is cooking I sauté some mushrooms, onions, broccolini stems, garlic, and spices. Right before the pasta gets put into the sauce pan, I add the broccolini florets. About 1/2 cup of pasta water helps to make a sauce. Easy, quick, and good, what could be better!?
This is our fancy dinner for this week. Scallops are my number one favorite protein. It is still hard for me to understand how something so sweet and delicious can be low in calories! John cooks them in a little oil in a hot cast iron frying pan. It takes less than five minutes to cook them perfectly. Don’t over cook them because they will turn rubbery.
For my part I steamed the potatoes and sautéed the collard greens and corn in a little faux butter. The greens cook really quickly since I have cut them into strips about the width of fettuccine and removed the central stem. I buy a package of frozen corn and just dump a cup of it in after a quick rinse to get any freezer frost off.
Using rotisserie chicken breast meat made this dinner super easy and quick! We warmed the chicken in some salsa verde. I made my spicy slaw which consists of medium tomato salsa, light mayo, and prepackaged shredded cabbage. John made rice for himself earlier in the day so I used a half white rice and half cauliflower rice combo for the base of my chicken. A slice of lime, a few cilantro leaves, and a half of a small avocado finished the plate.
We are ending the week with a birthday trip with our son to St. George, Utah. We will get there around 7 PM on Sunday and we will go to our local Harmon’s and get some excellent sushi. For the ret of the week we are eating fairly lightly because we know there will be some heavier dinners for the week we are away. Never fear, we’ve rented a condo with a kitchen so we will still be cooking most of our meals and I’ll be writing about them.
John decided to make fresh breadcrumbs since the amount of bread that goes into fresh breadcrumbs is way less than the dried type. He stuck the crumbs on with a mixture of mustard and light mayo. I took the remnants of his “ glue” and made a mustardy tartar sauce spiced with some sriracha. John cooked the fish in a pan with a little olive oil and some spray.
I bought some more of the already peeled and chopped butternut squash pieces from Trader Joe’s. I tossed the pieces in olive oil, salt, and pepper and put them on a sheet pan in a 400F oven for 30 minutes. They came out a little crispy and so sweet! Yum!
For a green veg I simply steamed some broccoli. It tasted good with the tartar sauce as well.
I seem to be putting a lot of stuff over kale this week. Certainly many of the things I eat could be put over rice or noodles but kale is good for me. So kale it is. It really bulks up a dish with a minimum of calories and fat.
Basically I chopped all the components and put them in the large Le Creuset pot we call Potapotamus to cook with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil and some spray. Mushrooms first with a few pieces of turkey sausage for additional oil. Then, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, chicken stock, the rest of the turkey sausage, a couple of sprigs of thyme, and the lentils. Cook until the lentils are tender, around 20 minutes. The kale underneath is wilted by the heat from the stew. John uses a bit of finishing oil but I do not.
Fancy dinner night for no reason! We buy frozen Chilean sea bass in a bag from Costco and it is an excellent product! John roasts the fish for 15 minutes in a 400F oven. Cooking time depends on the thickness of the fish and he always checks it with a temperature probe at around 12 minutes. He is looking for around 125F but this fish can stand higher temperatures due to its consistency.
I steamed some small new potatoes and was going to cook snow peas when I tasted one of the pods and it had a weird off-putting flavor. John concurred and we pitched them. I had a little cauliflower and broccoli still left in the produce drawer of the refrigerator that I was planning on putting in some soup. I sautéed it up instead in a little butter for tonight’s dinner. It was a tasty substitution.
Chilean sea bass is too pricy to eat every week but having it every two to three weeks makes everyone in the family happy. It is truly a delicious fish.
Probably my favorite dinner of the week, Pasta Wednesday has gotten even better since I started making Al Dente’s Carba Nada pasta. Since it is lower in calories and carbs I can have my three ounce portion with less guilt and less scrimping on my other meals of the day.
This Wednesday’s sauce is super simple. Arrabbiata is supposed to be “angry” sauce and the idea is to make it really spicy with red pepper flakes or chiles. There are very few ingredients. You sauté some onions, garlic, and pepper flakes in a little oil, pour in a 28oz. can of crushed tomatoes, let that simmer for 20 minutes, and finish off heat with some fresh basil and parsley.
I started with a teaspoon of pepper flakes but you can add what level of heat you like. The sauce had a back of the throat burn at that point so we added some shakes of Tabasco and sriracha to add a front of the mouth spiciness as well. Enough sauce is made for four servings or 1 lb. of pasta. I served my pasta over shredded kale to add some color and volume. Omit grated cheese for a vegan dish.
We tried a new recipe tonight and it was a winner! This vegetarian (or vegan is you use non-dairy yogurt) entree is so delicious and filling that I could not finish my bowlful.
You can get the recipe here. https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/curry-roasted-butternut-squash-and-chickpeas I did not make any alterations to the recipe except to cut the number of servings down. As a kitchen tip I would suggest buying a bag of already cut up butternut squash. The most time consuming job is to peel and cut up the squash. When roasting the chickpeas and butternut squash I added some cauliflower because I was afraid it would not be filling enough. I was wrong. It was very filling.
I served the roasted vegetables over some leftover farro and shredded kale and dressed the whole thing in a yogurt/lemon cilantro sauce. No oil or mayo involved.
I am looking forward to leftovers for lunch today!
Sunday is our day off from cooking. John makes an omelet and I make some sort of egg dish, sometimes with a vegetable stir fry, or with some beans in a tortilla, but today just simply scrambled. It’s a no-thinking, easy dinner, kind of a reward for cooking all week.
Omnivore 