My New Pasta Creation

Yum is all I can say. Not everything in the meal is shown in the picture on the left.

We had quite a bunch of vegetables sitting in our refrigerator and I knew they needed to be eaten soon, so I decided to cut them all up and throw them in with some chicken to make a yummy pasta dish. I debated for a while whether or not to throw in some canned tomatoes, but I'm SO glad I did because they add a lot of flavor.

I'm sure using other vegetables would be delicious as well, like mushrooms and onions and such. I just used what we had in the fridge, which happened to be what was cheap at the grocery store last week. This meal would also taste good with ground turkey, and different seasonings. It's delicious, flexible, and great for the food pyramid!

Lindsey's Flexitarian Chicken Veggie Pasta:

• 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast 
• 1 head broccoli cut into bite-sized pieces
• 2 green bell peppers cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 squash and 1 zucchini cut in half from top to bottom and then slice into several pieces about 1/4 of an inch wide
• 2 cans of diced tomatoes (drained slightly)
• whole wheat egg noodles
• seasoning salt
• pepper
• Italian seasoning

1. Put enough vegetable oil in the bottom of a frying pan to coat the whole bottom. I did this step first so I wouldn't have to clean my hands in between cutting the chicken and moving it to the pan. 

2. Cut up the chicken breast into many tiny pieces (that way you don't need tons of chicken but you still get several bites of it in your dish!) and put them in the pan. 

3. Start a pot of water boiling for the pasta. Once boiling, add the noodles. They don't take long to cook at all, so keep your eye on them! 

4. Cut up all of the vegetables into bite-sized pieces and add them to the pan as you go. I added the bell peppers first, then the broccoli, then the zucchini and squash. 

5. Add the spices you would like, throw in the two cans of tomatoes and turn the heat down. Cover with a lid so it all warms up. 

6. Once the pasta is drained, throw some on your plate and cover it with the chicken veggie mix. Enjoy! 

Turkey Bacon and Eggs

I love the classic bacon and eggs breakfast, but didn't like how fatty I felt after eating tons of bacon (because sometimes I lose self control when there is steaming bacon in front of me). The first time I had turkey bacon after eating regular bacon it was kind of strange, but from the second time on it became a treat that my husband Andrew and I looked forward to!

We make this meal about three times a week, if not more! We cook up 2 eggs for each of us (we like ours over easy) and 2 or 3 pieces of turkey bacon per person. We enjoy eating it with frozen mixed vegetables that have been cooked on the stove in a bit of vegetable oil. We then put salt and pepper over everything, eat it up, and then we grab a piece of whole grain bread. We like to put applesauce on our bread, or sometimes peanut butter, and I sometimes enjoy eating it with sliced peaches on top (both fresh and canned).

We like this meal because it has protein, vegetables, whole grain, and either fruit or nuts. It is seriously so good!

Oh, another tip for the turkey bacon: we don't like to cook it to the point that it becomes crispy. For some reason it has a funny taste when it is crispy. We like it pretty floppy, but definitely not raw!

Let me know what you think if you try this out! Also if you try it in a different way, and how that went for you.

Whole Wheat German Pancakes

One of my husband's favorite breakfast foods is German pancakes, and I really wanted to make some this weekend without breaking our new food lifestyle. I pulled up Pinterest and searched for whole wheat German pancakes and I found this recipe. It looked great, but we did make a few changes to it in order for it to better fit the diet. 

We didn't make the syrup to go on it, and we didn't use butter. We used vegetable oil! It actually turned out pretty good. I am eager to make it again, and my husband liked it too, but he wasn't sure how excited other people would be to try it out. Here are some pictures

As you can see, it didn't poof up like normal German pancakes do, but it did have the same kind of light, chewy texture. It really did look quite funny inside the pan because the oil didn't blend in to the pancake like butter does, but I mean we enjoyed it still!

We grabbed some canned peaches to make it sweet, and just writing about it is making my mouth water. I do want to try this recipe again, but this time I might try making it with butter (I mean...it IS in the top category of the food chart...so it's still okay to eat occasionally!)

If you try this recipe, let me know how it goes! I'm curious to know if anyone enjoys it as much as we did using the oil method.

Whole Wheat German Pancakes (Harvard Pyramid Style)

2 Tablespoons oil (olive, canola, vegetable)

1/2 cup Whole Wheat Flour

1/2 cup Milk

3 Eggs

Pinch of salt

• Preheat Oven to 450 degrees
• Coat the bottom of your pan with the oil
• Mix all ingredients in a bowl
• Pour the batter evenly around the whole pan
• Bake for 15-18 minutes

If you choose to use butter instead of oil, put two Tablespoons of butter into your pan and melt it in the oven before pouring your batter in the pan.