Roasted Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce

Eating healthy doesn't have to mean boring bland food...quite the contrary. I got my creative juices flowing yesterday in the kitchen and boy was I pleased with the results. I set out to recreate a butternut squash pasta sauce I used to buy at Costco, the results were fantastic and oh so easy to make. Serve it on top of some Zucchini noodles made using the Saladacco along with some grilled chicken and you are set with an easy peasy, gourmet dinner or put in a little more effort and make a vegetable lasagna like I did. Yep, a deliciously amazing vegetable lasagna, I will share how tomorrow.

Roasted Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce
1.5 lbs of butternut squash
4 cloves of garlic
Sea Salt
Pepper
Mrs. Dash original
Olive oil
Almond Milk (I ended up using about a cup, you may use more or less depending on how thick you want your sauce)

Method

Peel the butternut squash and remove the seeds (just a note, you can buy peeled and seeded butternut squash at the grocery store if you want to skip this step)

Cut the squash into bite size pieces.

Spread the squash out on a cookie sheet along with your garlic and mist with a little bit of olive oil. Sprinkle a little salt, pepper and Mrs. Dash on top of your squash.

Roast at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until it gets soft. Cooking time will vary depending on how large your squash is cut.

Remove the roasted squash from the oven and transfer the squash to your blender.

Start by adding 1/4 cup of almond milk to your squash and start pureeing. Add in more milk as needed until you have reached the consistency that you desire.

Serve over zucchini noodles or make this yummy vegetable lasagna once I get the recipe posted! How is that for a tease?

By the way, my kids love this sauce, I serve theirs over cheese ravioli's and they are happy as clams. Because of the color, they think it is cheese sauce and I just keep my mouth shut. It is my little secret that I just shared with you all.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spice Quinoa Granola

I have been on a quinoa kick lately. I have been buying quinoa in the bulk section at the grocery store lately and it is so cheap, something like $3.50 a pound. A pound of quinoa goes a long way so it is very economical which is a plus because health food can be expensive. I was researching quinoa recipes the other day and it said that a lot of people eat it at breakfast as a hot cereal, like oatmeal which has intrigued me but I have yet to try it. I also found lots of recipes for homemade granola that use quinoa but many of them have lots of sugar, syrup, dried fruit, nuts, and tons of oil. It got me thinking, I wonder if I could make it without the oil, fruit, nuts etc. which would make it more PINK friendly. I worked off a basic recipe that was close to being PINK friendly which can be found at Clean Eating Chelsey and tweaked it to make it my own and more PINK friendly.

So where does this fit into the PINK meal plan? I ate this for breakfast and counted it as my slow carb. For the protein I added in some greek yogurt. I also counted 1/3 cup as  a serving of slow carb because in the PINK method book it states that 1/2 cup cooked quinoa is a serving, When it bakes down and crunches up, it does shrink a bit so that was my best estimate as to how much a serving is. I approximate I will get 5- 1/3 cup servings from this recipe.

Pumpkin Spice Quinoa Granola
3/4 cup quinoa
1/2 cup quinoa flakes (could sub old fashion oats)
4 medjool dates chopped into a paste
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
3 tbsp chia seeds (could use flax seeds or leave them out)
1/4 almond milk
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 cups water

Method

Start by cooking your quinoa in the water along with the cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. It will take about 15 minutes for the quinoa to soften and the liquid to be absorbed/evaporate.

While the quinoa is cooking, pit your dates and chop them into a paste using your blender or food processor. If you don't have dates, you could use stevia, they are really only there to add sweetness.

Add your pumpkin puree to your dates, if you don't have pumpkin, I bet smashed bananas would work well also.

Add in the chia seeds and almond milk, vanilla and stir everything together, making sure the date paste is mixed in so there are no large clumps of dates

When the quinoa is done, add it to your pumpkin mixture and stir to combine

Add in your quinoa flakes or oats if you prefer and stir to combine

You should be left with a gooey sticky mess

Spread the quinoa pumpkin mixture out on a cookie sheet that is lined with a sil-pat (silicone baking sheet) or parchment paper

Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes

After 15 minutes of cooking, take out of the oven and break up the mixture into clumps using a spatula

Return to the oven for 15 minutes and stir again. Continue this process until the granola has gotten crunchy, mine took about 1 hour or so. As it cooks the granola  will darken. It will also get slightly crunchier as it cools so be sure that you don't over back the granola or else it will have a burnt taste.

Eat with some Greek yogurt or some almond milk, like you would cereal, however this is not an overly sweet granola like some granola . Feel free to add in nuts and dried fruit if you like just be careful because those items up the calories of this granola quickly and dried fruit really does contain a lot of sugar, especially the kind you find in the store. I also am not a PINK expert but I am not sure how PINK friendly those items would be, that is why I left mine fairly plain.

Enjoy!

Spinach Zucchini Quinoa Bake

When thinking about what to make for dinner tonight, I wanted to make something that didn't need a lot of babysitting...I was tired and not feeling great so I decided to make some type of casserole. Usually this means something in the vein of Campbell's chicken and rice casserole. You know the one where you mix rice and cream of something soup, sometimes some cheese in a pan and put chicken breasts of the top and bake. Yeah, I know the cream of something soup is awful but the dish is so easy to make when you don't have a lot of time for prep. Well, it got me thinking, could I somehow replicate the dish and make it PINK friendly?

I thought about the Alfredo sauce that I posted about here, and knew that I could use that as the creamy base to cook the rice in. Then I thought about the rice, did I want to use brown rice? I could but brown rice takes so long to cook I wasn't sure it would fully soften in the oven, so I decided to use quinoa because it cooks quickly like the instant rice you would use in the traditional casserole. I knew I was on to something so I decided to give it a try. I however didn't add the chicken on top, you could  with some seasoning and have an easy meal...I didn't because I was really just experimenting this afternoon when I made this and I didn't want to hassle with the chicken part. I simply baked some chicken in the oven at dinner to go along with the dish.

Spinach Zucchini Quinoa Bake
1 cup quinoa
1/4 onion chopped
1 zucchini shredded or use your saladacco if you have one
1 1/2 cups fresh spinach chopped
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1 cup plain almond milk
1 cup water
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp Bragg's Aminos
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp chopped garlic

Method

Chop your onions, mushrooms, spinach and shred your zucchini

(on a side note, as I made zucchini noodles using my saladacco tonight, my kids thought it was so funny that I was getting such long noodles  6+ feet, they said, "Let's pretend we are Lady and the Tramp" so I they stole some of my noodles and spread across the room and proceeded to eat them, until they got closer and closer, you know how it goes. I love that my kids are eating raw zucchini now, before PINK the only way I could get them to eat it was in zucchini bread which is not healthy at all. Okay thanks for humoring me, I just thought the picture was funny and wanted to share.)

Saute your onions, mushrooms, spinach and zucchini in a saute pan with a mist of olive oil.

In a separate bowl, mix your almond milk, water, Dijon, Bragg's, yeast, lemon juice and garlic.

Add your almond milk mixture to the pan along with your quinoa and stir to combine.

When the liquid begins to boil, pour into a casserole dish, mine was about 6 x 9 but an 8x 8 would work or a pie pan. I just wouldn't use a big pan like a 9 x 12, I think the quinoa would be spread to thin and might not cook correctly. At this point you could add your chicken to the top to make it an easy meal.

Cover your dish with foil or a lid if your casserole dish has a lid and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes. You could also skip putting it into a pan and baking and just finish it on the stove top letting it simmer until the quinoa has softened, that is fine. I just wanted to be able to forget about it and not have to watch it like you do on the stove top.

Like I said I didn't add chicken to mine, next time I will. I simply sprinkled some almond meal with a little Mrs. Dash to the top of my chicken and baked in the oven. Serve the casserole along with a salad and dinner is done.

Enjoy!

Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal

I know I have posted baked oatmeal before and I am sure most of you probably have already thought about tweaking it to make different flavors but it dawned on me the other day to try and make a carrot cake version. I finally had some time this morning to do just that and the results were good. A word of warning though, if you make this expecting carrot cake in the traditional sense you will be disappointed. While it contains the flavors of carrot cake, it is not really sweet like carrot cake is. You could add in other things to make it more carrot cake like such as raisins and walnuts if you wanted. I chose not to because I wasn't sure that raisins or walnuts are PINK approved, not to mention I am very allergic to walnuts so they wouldn't go in anyway. I also thought of using some crushed pineapple but again it is not listed on the approved list of slow fruit so I didn't use pineapple but I bet that would be good also.

Carrot Cake Baked Oatmeal 
2 1/2 cups Old fashion oats
2 cups almond or coconut milk
2 eggs
2 under ripe bananas
1 1/2 cups grated carrots
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1 tsp vanilla extract
Stevia to your liking of sweetness


Optional topping
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt
1/2 tsp vanilla
stevia to sweeten


Method

Mash bananas

Add in grated carrots to banana and stir to combine

Add in eggs, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda and baking powder and stevia

Whisk in milk to the egg mixture

Add in oats, stir to combine

Using a 1/2 cup measuring spoon fill your muffin pan. You should get 12 oatmeal muffins with this recipe

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes or until the oatmeal has set


These can be eaten hot or cold, I prefer them warm. I also topped mine with a little vanilla Greek yogurt.


I eat 2 as a serving, they freeze really well so make a bunch up when you have some free time and your breakfast during the week will be easy peesy!

Enjoy!

Cauliflower and White Bean Hummus

Did you watch the Academy Awards last night? Me, kind of...when my kids would allow me to. All you mama's out there know how that goes. I was thumbing through the Everyday Food magazine the other day while waiting in line at the check stand and came across a recipe for a cauliflower and white bean dip that looked a lot like hummus. I quickly took a mental not of the ingredients and knew that it would be a perfect snack/dinner to have while watching the Oscars tonight.

Cauliflower and White Bean Hummus
1 head cauliflower
6 cloves garlic
1 can white beans
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 cup almond milk
Mrs. Dash Original

Method
Start by cutting up your head of cauliflower into bit size pieces.

Lay out on a cookie sheet along with your garlic, spray with a mist of olive oil and sprinkle cauliflower with Mrs. Dash or you seasoning of choice.

Roast at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until cauliflower has softened.

While it cauliflower is roasting, open the can of white beans drain the beans and rinse with water.

Add beans, roasted cauliflower, garlic, Dijon mustard, lemon juice and olive oil to your blender.


Blend until the dip is smooth, adding almond milk by the tablespoonful until it reaches the desired consistency, you may not need the entire 1/4 cup.

This will make about 2 cups of dip, I counted 1/2 cup as a serving because 1 serving of protein in PINK is  half a cup of beans.

Would you like a bite?

Serve with cut up vegetables.

I also made some vegetable stuffed mushrooms to complete the meal. A great little snack/dinner to have while  watching the Oscars. This would also be a great dish to take to a party so that you know that something there will be PINK approved.

Enjoy!