Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Pasta & pesto...minus the carbs!

Tuesday Recap:

8:00am:  Coffee with creamer

10:0am:  Breakfast- Triple Chocolate Chunk Vitatop
My VERY FAVORITE 'top!

12:00pm:  Lunch- Celery with 2 tbs. peanut butter


2:30pm:  Snack - 1/2 bowl of Brown sugar oatmeal squares

40 Minutes Elliptical
So we recently got an elliptical 'lent' to us and I figured I'd go and try it out.  And while I was at it, I thought I'd make a new 'workout playlist' with some old favs & some new favs from Body Jam & boxing classJ  Thought I'd share if you needed some new upbeat tunes:
  • I Miss the Misery - Halestrom
  • I'm Shipping up to Boston - The Departed soundtrack (LOOOVVVEEE that movie!)
  • My Songs know What You Did in the Dark - Fall Out Boy
  • Numb - Usher
  • On Top of the World - Imagine Dragons
  • Radioactive - Imagine Dragons
  • S&M (Remix) - Rihanna & Britney Spears
  • Serenity - Godsmack  (old schoo favlJ)
  • Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon
  • She Doesn't Mind - Sean Paul
  • Tightrope - Janelle Monae
  • Till the World Ends - Britney Spears
  • Sparks (Turn off your Mind) - Fedde le Grand & Nicky Romero
I hit shuffle & this playlist kept me moving for 45 minutes straight to the tune of a 425+ calorie burn.  Thought that wasn't too bad for my VERY FIRST TIME ON AN ELLIPTICAL.  No jokeJ

6:00pm:  Zucchini "pasta" with pesto

If you have a mandolin, this dish comes together in absolutely no time!  I cranked out these 2 zucchinis into strands in under 3 minutes...

But if you don't, you can always just chop up the zucchini into the thinnest strands possible.  I had some great looking scallions in the fridge & decided I wanted shred those into spaghetti strands & had to slice em by hand.  (was toooo leery to slice the thin scallions with on the mandoline!)   
It's a little more tedious, but it still gets the job done!  Once they were chopped, I tossed em into a pot with some garlic & olive oil and let them soften up for about 10 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I got to working on the pesto.  Just look how purty my basil was... 

Into a food processor went: 
  • 2 cups (or more) of basil
  • 4 garlic (or less) cloves 
  • 1/4 cup grated cheese
  • small handful of walnuts
  • Drizzle of olive oil
I only used a drizzle of olive oil here & it gave it a pretty good consistency.  If you want it a little more 'saucy' without all the extra oil, you can always add in some chicken or vegetable broth to thin it out.  

Finally, I added the pesto to the 'noodles' and let it all warm up together for a few minutes.  I'm sure there are plenty of you out there who are braver than me and could eat this ENTIRE dish raw & cold...which is totally fine, but I like my meals more on the warmer side of thingsJ 

I think you will seriously LOVE this 'pasta swap!'  Low cal & delicious and zucchini noodles are a GREAT place to use a heavy-on-the-flavor sauce like pesto.  You really just taste the pesto & can kinda ignore the fact that you're actually scarfing down a boatload of zucchini! (and scallionsJ)

And spreading the wealth of our MAMMOTH lettuce from the market, we had some side salads...that I also topped with a little leftover pesto.  Yum..that was a good call, I must say! 

And despite it being CLOSE & HUMID inside, the back porch was jusssssssssttttt right to sit outside last night.  It was enjoyed all around, me thinksJ 

Alright, I better get this post up since I'm running behind today!  Have a great rest of your day!

2 comments:

Cheri said...

YUM! Thanks for this idea with the zucchini swap! I'm trying out more GF recipes and this is just the trick!

Julie said...

Such a good one..after I saw this I was wishing I had zucchini. I made Giada's Rigatoni w eggplant puree..the zucchini would have been perfect for it! Next time.. Although you are going to need to show me how to use a mandolin b/c I seriously can never make it happen.

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