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!

3 Course Valentine's Day Dinner Pt. 2 Soy Ginger Marinated Halibut on a bed of Oriental Slaw

Part 2, the main course. Of course if you are not a fish fan, use chicken breasts instead. You also could use any other fish you like, this is great with salmon or tilapia. On a side note, if you add a little shredded chicken to the slaw instead of the fish, this makes for a great PINK lunch that is reset friendly, if you omit the orange. A little shout out, thank you to my Mother and Father-in-law for sharing their spoils of their fishing trip, the halibut was wonderful and that is a big compliment from me as I am not a huge fish fan.

Soy Ginger Marinated Halibut
4 tbsp low sodium soy sauce or Bragg's amino acid
1 tsp minced fresh ginger
2 clove garlic minced
6 tbsp vinegar (rice, white or red, I used white)
2 tsp sesame oil
stevia to taste
1 tsp sesame seeds (totally optional, I should have left out and only put into the dressing)
2 servings of Halibut (mine we about 7 ounces each, of course if you are following PINK only eat 4 ounces)

Method
Put everything except the halibut into a small bowl and mix to combine. Divide the marinade in half, half will be your marinade, half will be your dressing for the slaw.

With the half that is reserved for the marinade, pour it over your halibut, making sure that your fish is coated in the marinade. Cover and put into the refrigerator to marinate for 2 or 3 hours.

Grill either on the BBQ or on your grill pan. If they are thick fillets you may have to finish off the cooking in a 350 degree oven so that your fish doesn't burn. This is what I had to do.

Oriental Slaw
1 small head Napa Cabbage shredded
1/4 head of a small purple cabbage shredded
1 orange peeled and separated
2 carrots shredded
1/4 of small red onion sliced
2 tbsp slivered almonds
reserved marinade/dressing from halibut

Method

Mix all the vegetables and the dressing in a large bowl just before the fish is finished cooking. If you dress the slaw to early the cabbage may begin to wilt, though it is much more hardy than lettuce.

Put about 2 cups of the slaw onto the plate and top with your fish.

Note: I also drizzled about a tsp or so of some prepared bottled oriental dressing over my fish and slaw just for presentation purposes. I used the Trader Joe's brand which has 35 calories for 2 tbsp. I just don't like to use to much because the second ingredient listed is sugar.

Enjoy!

Be sure to check out part 1 Vegetable Stuffed Mushrooms and part 3 Chocolate Panna Cotta

Baked Banana Oatmeal

This is a good one!! For all of you who work and need to get breakfast in a hurry, this is a great baked oatmeal that can be made on your day off and then eaten through out the week. If you divide it into 6 equal portions, your breakfast is covered for the week. That is unless your family likes it, in that case it won't last that long, not that I am speaking from experience of anything.

So first off let me give credit where credit is due. I found this recipe on a great blog called Budget Bytes and while the recipe looks fabulous it wasn't quite P.I.N.K approved so I set to work PINKifying it. Here is what I came up with.

Baked Banana Oatmeal


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

So before we get to making the oatmeal, let's talk a bit about how PINK friendly this is. So the blueprint for PINK Primary tells you, you can eat 1 serving of a low calorie protein and 1 serving of a  slow carb or a slow fruit for breakfast. Here is how I work it out in my mind. My oats are my serving of a slow carb and one serving is a half a cup to which I am putting in 5 servings of oats but getting 6 servings out of the dish so adding in the banana I feel is okay for me to get in that other serving of a slow fruit plus some. I know that I am over on the slow fruit but I hardly eat mine at lunch so I feel fine with it. The same goes with the protein, the milk counts as a protein along with the eggs but 1 cup of milk is a serving of milk and 1 egg is a serving so technically this recipe has 4 servings of protein but again will make six servings.

Argue with me if you want that I am not following the PINK eating method to a T. For me I feel it is fine, make your decision based on your needs. Also on PINK we don't count calories but I am always interested and keep a little mental running tally of what I eat through out the day, albeit imperfect I know. So here is how I figured out the calories/nutritional content. Keep in mind the recipe list the total ingredients, the tool I used takes the total calories divides it by the number of servings to come up with the calories listed. No 2 1/2 cups of oats is not 125 calories, it is more like 750 calories but divided by 6 is 125, you get how I came to the calories? If anyone is interested I use the calorie count website, under new recipes you can put your ingredients and it will analyze it for you. Pretty cool huh?

(per serving)

Cals

Gr.

2 1/2 cups old

 fashioned oats

125

A

2

cups

 unsweetened

 vanilla almond breeze

13

A

2

eggs

21

B+

2

bananas

35

A

1/2 

tsp

baking powder

0

B+

1/2 

tspbaking soda

0

1/2

tsp

cinnamon

0

A-

 

1/2

tsp pumpkin pie spice

0

B+

1

tsp

 vanilla extract

2

B

1

stevia

0

Nutrition Facts

Serving Size 169 g

Amount Per Serving

Calories  198 Calories from Fat  46

% Daily Value*

Total Fat  5.1g 8%

Saturated Fat  0.9g 5%

Trans Fat  0.0g

Cholesterol  62mg 21%

Sodium  185mg 8%

Total Carbohydrates  32.8g 11%

Dietary Fiber  4.8g 19%

Sugars  5.0g

Protein  6.8g

Vitamin A 5% • Vitamin C 6% Calcium 10% • Iron 12%

Nutrition Grade B-

* Based on a 2000 calorie diet

How to make baked oatmeal

Mash your bananas

Add your egg, vanilla extract, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder, baking soda and salt to the mashed banana and stir to incorporate.

Whisk in your almond or coconut milk, I used unsweetened almond milk.

Add your oats and stir to incorporate.

Pour into a glass 8 x 8 pan that has been sprayed with a little oil

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Divide your baked oatmeal up into 6 equal servings and know that you are set for the week when it comes to breakfast.

Cheesy Kale Chips and "Lemonade"

Many of us following the PINK Method know about Kale chips. They certainly have saved me a few times when all I wanted to do was snack, but I must admit I found them a little boring. Well, that just changed. I was wasting time over on Pinterest yesterday when I came across a recipe for cheesy kale chips. I thought "cheesy kale chips, what are those?" When looking at the recipe, it called for something called nutritional yeast which it said gave the chips a cheesy flavor. Boy was I intrigued so off to the PINK book I went to see if it was allowed. Low and behold it is allowed, yippy! Off the Fred Meyer to see if they had it in their health food section. They did and I was home in no time making cheesy kale chips. Here is how you can too.

Wash your and dry your kale

Prepare your yeast paste, the original recipe called for you to make a paste out of the yeast, raw cashews, red pepper and water. While, nuts are allowed while in reset, I opted not to use them as I wanted this to be a "free" snack and I was all out of red peppers so I just chose to mix the yeast with a little water until a thin paste was formed.

Pour the paste on the kale and mix like you were dressing a salad.

Spread the kale out on the cookie sheet, sprinkle with a tiny bit of sea salt and bake at 350 for about 10 to 12 minutes. I turned my kale over about half way through to get even crispness.

Take out of oven, let cool a few minutes and enjoy all the "cheesy" goodness.

So my review, I enjoyed these and will make again. The cheesy flavor isn't really cheesy like a Doritos is cheesy but it added a little more interest to my kale chips which I appreciated.

As a bonus, I wanted to share a product with you that I have been enjoying. I picked up some herbal Meyer Lemon tea at the store and while good warm, it is excellent chilled with a tiny bit of stevia as a faux "lemonade" I enjoyed it with my cheesy kale chips today as a fun little snack while watching the NY Giants/Packers game with my hubby.