Meat Free Night

Lately, I have been trying to find ways that my husband and I can eat very healthy but still enjoy good food and even indulge a little from time to time. One of the ways that I have decided to do that is to make sure that I have at LEAST one night a week where we are meat free. For some of you this may be a novelty. For others, you may eat meat free multiple times a week or you may even be vegetarian. Wherever you are coming from, I am going to try to post my meat free meals from time to time just to share with you my ideas. They may not be the most inventive recipes in the world, or, who knows, they may be the most inventive. I got the idea for this recipe from a magazine and added my own twist to it. I thought that the result was tasty, pretty, and, most important, very healthy.

I made a pasta dish with pesto and grape tomatoes. I used my own home made pesto for this which is super easy and fun because you can virtually change any of the ingredients and still make an awesome pesto. I also used whole grain rotini pasta. Whole grain pasta was used because it adds texture and heaviness to the dish along with a little extra protein and fiber. This is good because we are not using meat so the extra protein is nice and will make you feel more full. Rotini is good because the pesto will stick easily to all the swirls. You can use this or any other small pasta noodle. Grape tomatoes are fantastic. Tomatoes are one of my favorite foods by the way, but we will cover that in another post. Grope tomatoes are awesome because they have a condensed flavor and are sweet and add juiciness to the bite. Hmmm, my mouth waters just thinking about it.
Also, I have an easy and yummy salad that I hope you will love.

Here we go

Ingredients:
1 pound of whole grain rotini or other small pasta
1 cup of grape tomatos, cut in half,
1/2 cup of parsley
1 cups of fresh spinach
1/2 cup of basil
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/3 cup of grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
1 clove of garlic
1/2 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of cashews
1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes

Get a large pot for your pasta and boil the water, once water is boiling, add the pasta and a small hand full of salt. Keep the lid off and let cook for 8-10 minutes or until done. Strain.
In the meantime take 1 cup of the spinach, the parsley, the basil, garlic, cashews, 1/2 tsp of salt, parmesan cheese, and olive oil. If you have a food processor put these ingredients in a food processor and turn on and slowly stream in the olive oil. If you do not have a food processor take all of these ingredients plus the olive oil and put in a large bowl and blend together with an emersion blender. You can adjust the consistency of the sauce by adding more olive oil if you like. Once the pesto is done, combine with the pasta and mix together in a large bowl. Add the cut grape tomatoes. Take the pine nuts and put them in a small frying pan and toast over high heat for about 3-4 min and then put pine nuts over the pasta.
                                                                 Combine. Salt and Pepper

Salad
3 cups of fresh spinach
1 orange
1/4 of a red onion
1/2 cup of white wine vinegar
1/4 cup of lemon juice
1/2 cup of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste.

Put the spinach in your salad bowl. Take the orange and cut the top and the bottom off. Then cut down on all sides of the orange to remove the skin. Cut down the middle and then into bite size pieces. Like such

Take the red onion and slice it into thin bite size pieces. take it and put it into a small bowl and pour 1/4 of a cup of white wine vinegar over it and let it sit for 10-15 min. The vinegar will begin to break down the onion and make it flavorful and not as strong when you eat it raw in the salad. Once it has set, add it to the salad. In a separate bowl, put the remaining vinegar, lemon juice and add some salt and pepper. Whisk in the olive oil. Pour the dressing over the salad. 

  Enjoy!