PS...I Love You

I read a Weight Watcher article about 7 Ways to Eat Smarter. The first tip was to sneak veggies into your dishes. I was all, "I do that already! That's great! But why is it sneaking?!?"

Theory: we shy away from vegetables for so many socially primed reason we don't even realize how awesome they can be.

This is where I will yap about salad PS..I Love You.

Pasta Salad: The Next Generation.

Yesterday I did a "cabbage in the straw" quick fix. Cabbage in the straw is a 30-min meal recipe from Rachael Ray. Basically I matched thin whole wheat spaghetti up with shredded green cabbage. I paid just 1.59 for the cabbage, which is 3x as much as I paid for the pasta.

Yup. I paid 39 cents for the pasta. Coupons baby!

The point is...aside from bragging...pasta and vegetables come in such a large variety and many of them are very, very, very cheap. Or, can be made very, very affordable. If a box of pasta costs let's say 2 bucks. Eventually it goes on sale because of it's shelf life (gotta clear inventory) or you have a coupon. Now, it's affordable. It's very, very, very affordable when you stretch out an 7-8 cup serving box of pasta with vegetables.

So, back to dinner: I took one of my splurgers, pesto, and added it to my quick fix. You can can also stretch out pesto with a ubiquitous item, chicken stock. So, literally my dinner costs me under $2 a serving. Maybe 3 when you add the pesto.

What is also great about pasta salad is that you can flavor transfer, so you're not eating the same ol' salad. You can match like shapes with like with like such as thin spaghetti with shredded cabbage, floret vegetables (broccoli or cauliflower) with elbow noodles (macaroni), spherical with spherical (gemelli w/ beans). Or, jsut go against the grain and mix it all up. You really have a great tabula rasa with pasta salads. You can get gluten free mixes or whole grain if you don't do white starch or looking to up your nutritional profile.

Go where no man has gone before people. Yes, I made a star trek reference. Shush and make me a salad.