Sneaking in Your Veggies

I’m just going to apologize in advance for all the Prince photos. But I think he’s cute, so hopefully you don’t mind dealing with it.

I started my Monday off on a high note this morning, creating French Toast Oats (sans the jar). Super delicious!!

That would be oatmeal (1/2 cup rolled oats with 1 cup almond milk heated over the stove) topped with a banana, unsalted peanuts, a heaping tablespoon of Mighty Maple peanut butter, cinnamon, and a sprinkling of granola. This actually turned out to be such a large breakfast that I split it in 2. The first half I ate at home and the second half I ate at work around 10:30.

Since my breakfast continued so late into the day, I ended up not eating my lunch until close to 2 pm. As you can see, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about making something. Instead, it was a quick act to throw things together as quickly as possible and come up with something that closely resembled a lunch.

That would be a bowl of meatballs covered in sauce, parmesan cheese, and mozzarella cheese. Not exactly gourmet, but I figured I would fit in a more nutritious meal into the day at dinnertime. Oh, and Prince is still a fan of these ‘balls.

After work, I took the pup for lovely walk down to Lake Washington. Walking is truly one of my favorite activities. It really helps me clear my head and let go of any stress leftover from the office.

I had two things in mind for dinner tonight. One being this box of spaghetti that was another discounted find from my grocery store last week:

The second thing being a zucchini that was going to have to get tossed if I didn’t use it today. After a little bit of searching, I finally found the perfect dish! Enter, Smitten Kitchen’s Zucchini Strand Spaghetti! It combines my two items of spaghetti and zucchini, plus other loves such as garlic, basil, and cheese. Yum!

While my water boiled for the spaghetti, I got to work at grating my zucchini into spaghetti-like strands.

After I put the spaghetti into the pot, I decided that I wanted to steam my zucchini for just a minute or two. It was already soft, but was pretty cold, so I thought this would be a good way to warm it up. I know you will be amazed at my engineering skills when it comes to keeping the zucchini from touching the boiling water!

For the sauce/dressing, i heated olive oil in a pan and then added minced garlic, red pepper flakes, and chopped basil. The end result:

I thought this was a great way to sneak in veggies. I didn’t even taste the difference between the pasta and zucchini. This also helped me from not going overboard with the pasta since half my bowl was veggies, I used a lot less spaghetti than I normally would have.

Zucchini Pasta:

(to serve two:)

• 2 zucchinis
• 1/2 pound of spaghetti (or thin pasta of choice)
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 tsp minced garlic
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
• 2 Tbsp chopped basil
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• Salt & Pepper

Directions: Prepare pasta as directed on box. Grate the zucchini into long, thin strands. If necessary, steam the zucchini over the spaghetti briefly to soften or warm up. In a skillet over medium heat, add olive oil and garlic. Once the garlic starts to brown slightly, add the red pepper flakes and basil. Stir briefly and remove from heat. Add spaghetti and zucchini to serving dish and top with garlic mixture. Add Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Later on in the evening, I munched on a few handfuls of white chocolate chips. Poor Prince didn’t realize that chocolate is off limits to him.

And with that, I’ll leave you with this pretty sunset:

We’re exhausted!!

Goodnight! ~B