In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to make a green dinner. It would seem logical to make a bunch of Irish food, but we had done that a few nights before (my good friend, Colleen -Irish friend, of course- and I cooked up a delightful Irish feast for the poker crew). The food was amazing, but i didn't really want to repeat. After that feast, we needed something lighter. So I decided to make pasta with green sauce. I had seen a recipe for spinach pesto, and decided to combine that recipe with a weight watchers spinach dip recipe. That and some green beans, some bread (Kaelyn wondered why I didn't make green bread...good thought, but my lack of oven doesn't exactly motivate me to make homemade bread. If I had thought about it in time, I suppose I could have put a loaf in the bread maker. Oh well, there's always next year.)
Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the ingredients, but here's the recipe.
1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium garlic cloves
1/2 tsp table salt
4 cups basil
3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 cup low fat ricotta
6 cup(s) spinach
This makes about 4 cups; 1 point is based on 1/2 cup servings.
Put the spinach and basil in the food processor, blend until all chopped up.
Add everything else. Blend some more.
Done! Easy as pie! Actually, much, much easier.
I cooked the linguine in green water, hoping it might tint the pasta green. It didn't really work, but was fun to try. I mean, I'm already attempting to cook pasta in the microwave (I lived the last 4+ years without a microwave and now somehow I have to try to rely on this foreign device to act as my stove and oven!).
Green pesto sauce on very, very slightly green tinged linguine
Mark was a little disturbed by the green butter, but I liked it.
The verdict? Mark said it was fine, but that's it. A little too healthy for him, I think. Kaelyn said it was bad - but I caught her putting her green beans in the sauce and she even let a "yum" slip out. She can't help but love the basil, but she's 6 so she has to be turned off by how "green" and healthy it looks. Those are just the rules when you're 6. I loved it, so fresh and light tasting. I like dipping carrots and celery in it though, more than eating it as a pasta sauce. Mmmm.... Great way to enjoy the leftovers without having to subject the fam to such a nutrition packed meal.
Dessert
We made pudding parfaits for dessert. No recipe for you here - we just made some chocolate pudding (Jell-O sugar free chocolate pudding, mix with milk, refrigerate - you get the idea). The fun part was making green cool whip.
Topped with a thin mint (gosh I love girl scouts!). YUM!
(yes, poker glasses - can't help it)
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