Category Archives: not so junk food

I took on two new things in the last couple weeks. I made Indian food and I tried eggplant for the first time. The Indian wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be and the eggplant was awesome.

I adapted this from a recipe I saw in the most recent issue of Weight Watchers magazine. It’s broccoli, zucchini, and almonds tossed in a red curry paste-coconut milk sauce on some barley. This. Was. Amazing. And only took twenty minutes! I love Indian food but most recipes I see require several ingredients and I just don’t have time to find all the ingredients and put it together. This was so easy and delicious. Jason and I both loved it.

So clearly we’ve got some apples and broccoli here, but that sandwich is the most important part. The eggplant sandwich. This has become quite the lunch staple for me. I take a wheat bun, two tablespoons of goat cheese, and a handful of almonds on the bun. Then I cook the slice of eggplant in a skillet with a little olive oil and then toss it on the bun. This might sound weird, but it’s so good. I like to get the eggplant a little burnt and then with the goat cheese and almonds the sandwich gets a real smoky taste. Yum!

What are you eggplant recipe suggestions? I’ve got quite a bit left and I’d like to try something new.

I never really got into cooking. Some people started cooking high school and became awesome at it–but cooking wasn’t something we did at my house. My mom cooked and I watched, and then I ate and it was awesome. When I moved out of the dorms I didn’t think cooking would be that big of a deal, turns out I was wrong. We ate out a lot last year, which is not only expensive but usually unhealthy. So this year I’m making a concerted effort to eat at home more often and cook meals. I’ve fallen in love with pasta because it is the easiest way to make a meal. Okay maybe not the easiest, but I’m never hungry when I’m done and nothing I’ve made has taken more than twenty minutes.

The first pasta dish I made was penne pasta with gorgonzola cheese, dried cranberries, walnuts, and cooked spinach. This was super easy to make. I just made the penne, which took about seven minutes, and I cooked the spinach in a bit of olive oil until it shrunk up. After draining the pasta I combined all the ingredients in a bowl, stirred, and then ate. I made the box of pasta when I made this so there was a lot left. I heated it up for lunches and dinners for a couple of days. I loved the sweetness of the cranberries and walnuts, and spinach has so many positive health benefits I liked the idea of sneaking it into my pasta. I was also really surprised I liked the pasta so much even though there was no sauce. In the future I think I’ll cook without sauce more often.

Of course I did use sauce the next time I made pasta. I found a four cheese tomato sauce, which seemed weird to me but healthier than the white four cheese sauce so I thought I’d give it a try. It didn’t necessarily taste that cheesy so I just melted up some mozzarella cheese and mixed it into the pasta when I finished–I think that is what really made this pasta. Otherwise I just made the pasta in about seven minutes and heated the spinach again in some olive oil. Mixed everything together and voila–Jason really liked this pasta.

I’ve been pretty amazed at what I’ve been able to make up just from flipping through magazines or cooking blogs. I also really enjoy cooking without a recipe which I’ve gotten better at even after a few weeks of cooking. This will be a new weekend feature on the blog–I hope you enjoy it!