Basil Pesto Pasta Primavera

I haven’t written in forever, but wanted to share this quick and easy meal I just made with most of the ingredients coming from my garden. I work from home and I am going away tomorrow for a couple of nights so I wanted to make a nice meal for myself for lunch today with enough leftover for my husband to have dinner tomorrow night. This recipe serves 2 so add/deduct as necessary.

Basil Pesto
Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO) – I probably used about 1/2 cup
Handful of pine nuts
Big bunch of basil
1-2 cloves of garlic smashed – depending on how much of a kick you want
Juice from half of a lemon
About 1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan
Salt & Pepper to taste

I combined all of the ingredients in my “Magic Bullet,” although you could of course use a different type of food processor or a blender.

Set the pesto aside. Then, start to boil the water for the pasta. I like to use Brown Rice Pasta vs. regular or whole wheat. It cooks very fast and I have found that it has much less carbs than whole wheat pasta. While the water is boiling, chop up the veggies you would like to saute for the pasta. Today I used a fresh zucchini from the garden, some leftover grape tomatoes and 1/2 an onion. I tossed those around in a pan with a little EVOO while my pasta was cooking.

Once I drained the pasta, I transferred it into a large tupperware (since I would be saving the other half for my husband’s dinner tomorrow night), added the pesto, then added the veggies and mixed it up. Done and done.

Delicious, fast, easy and best of all…healthy! Enjoy!

Salmon, Asparagus and Artichoke Pasta

I love using leftovers to make a great lunch. When I went grocery shopping on Sunday, I intentionally bought more salmon than I would need so that I would have leftovers to play with.

Last night, I made grilled salmon and grilled asparagus – I had a little piece of salmon and 2 pieces of asparagus left. Today, I chopped up the asparagus and salmon into chunks. I also quartered 3 artichoke hearts.

I then cooked some organic brown rice pasta noodles. While that was cooking, I quickly sauteed the salmon, asparagus and artichoke in a small frying pan with 1 tablespoon of basil pesto.

After I drained the cooked pasta, I added it back to the pot, threw in the salmon, asparagus, artichoke, pesto mixture, added a sprinkle of parmesan cheese. I mixed this up and put it in a bowl for a great lunch. This took me about 7 minutes start – finish and required me to wash 4 dishes. Not bad!

Healthy Lunch – Pasta w/ Pesto and Veggies

Yesterday for lunch, I made a really good pasta dish. It probably took me about 10 minutes total to prepare and it was of course, healthy! You will see that I used mushrooms…AGAIN. Obviously, I had a bit of a mushroom surpluss this week (the only package I could find at our teeeny tiny little grocery store in town was the economy-sized one).

I work from home, but if you go into the office – it would be very easy to prepare this the night before or in the morning. If that’s impossible, it may be helpful for you to prepare all of the components on your day off in preparation for the week (i.e. cook the pasta, slice the mushrooms, slice the tomatoes, etc.) so that all you have to do in the morning is assemble.

Ingredients

• Organic Brown Rice Spiral Pasta
• Sliced baby bello mushrooms (you can actually buy these pre-sliced)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
• 2.5 tbsp basil pesto (I will post my recipe soon or, if you don’t want to make your own, try to find a local organic homemade pesto at your grocer and make sure that there are NO PROCESSED ingredients (should only be EVOO, pine nuts, basil, parmesan cheese, etc….REAL INGREDIENTS)
• Chopped sundried tomatoes (I probably used about 6 of them) – I buy organic plain sundried tomatoes – not the ones in a can or jar, soaking in oil
• 1 thick slice mozzarella cheese (leftover from paninis) – diced

Instructions

Cook the pasta and drain (the rice pasta cooks in about 5 minutes). While pasta is cooking, saute the mushrooms in a small pan in about 1 tsp of EVOO with a pinch of salt for about 3-5 minutes until they are tender and sweating. After you drain pasta, add it back to the pot and then add the mushrooms, basil, tomatoes, and mozarella. Mix it up…done and done!