What's for dinner? #2

Here's the second instalment of What's For Dinner! This time I loosely followed a recipe and it's a great meal for a family, or a dish that can last a few nights.

Pumpkin & Ginger Pasta Bake

This was a recipe I tweaked from the internet in an attempt to not waste any of my pumpkin from the
Halloween carving. A delicious pasta dish, with no cheese! Of course you could add cheese if you wanted to.

Ingredients:
12 oz wholewheat pasta
15 oz pure pumpkin, either fresh or canned
1-2 medium onions, diced
2 garlic cloves, either crushed or chopped finely
1/2 courgette, chopped width-ways into circles and then cut into quarters
1/2 cup water, kept after boiling the pasta
A small amount of ginger, grated - a little goes a long way!




Recipe:
Preheat the oven at 200 degrees Celsius.
Boil pasta for it's allotted time minus two minutes. While the pasta is cooking, sauté the the onions and garlic until soft with a little oil (I use the one calorie spray). Once the onions and garlic is soft, add the courgette and sauté further. Add the pumpkin into the frying pan, and toss all the ingredients together in the pan for a little while. Then add the pasta and the 1/2 cup of water to the pan, mixing all the ingredients together for a couple of minutes, until the water has mostly evaporated.

Once this is done, all you need to do is put all the ingredients into your tray, I used an 11"x6" glass casserole dish. I then added the ginger and mix it in to the dish with the other ingredients. You can also sauté the ginger with the ingredients in the pan if you want to, but I didn't decide to add ginger until it was too late.

All you need to do then is put the dish into the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes, and it's done! It's a super duper easy recipe, I did it late at night (when I probably should have been sleeping) but it was a very quick preparation and cooking time, and it was definitely delicious!

I really enjoyed writing this recipe and I hope you guys enjoyed it too! Let me know if you tried this recipe out and if you tweaked it in any way.

What's for dinner? #1

So I thought I'd share some of my healthy dinner recipes, which are more than affordable for students. Now I'm no chef, or even a particularly good cook, so these recipes will probably be pretty simplistic but that's probably a good thing!

Turkey and Vegetable Pasta

This was a bit of a spur of the moment meal, made with what was left in my fridge, but it was delicious so I thought I'd share it. This recipe is very simple, full of veggies and delicious flavours!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup of whole wheat pasta
An amount of lean turkey mince of your choice (I only used a small amount)
1/2 a small courgette
1/2 a red pepper
1 small onion
1 clove of garlic
1 handful of frozen sweetcorn
1 handful of frozen mixed vegetables.

Recipe:
Firstly put the pasta in a saucepan of boiling water & leave it over the heat for 10 minutes. After these ten minutes, put in the frozen vegetables & frozen sweetcorn. This saves on things to wash up! Leave the saucepan over the heat for another 5 minutes.

While the pasta is cooking, put the turkey into the frying pan to cook. You can use low-calorie cooking spray to cook it in. After it's cooked for a while, add the fresh vegetables. I diced my onions, cut the courgette into circles and then into quarters, and I cubed the red peppers. I also cut the garlic into small pieces, but you can also use a garlic crusher. Put all the vegetables into the pan and fry it along with the turkey, until the turkey is cooked through and the onions are browned. Once it was all done, I halved the amount and had the other half as a snack later on. You can also do this, or keep the leftovers to put with a salad the next day, or just have all of the turkey and vegetables with your pasta.

Drain the pasta and the frozen vegetables, and put on your plate. Then add the turkey and cooked vegetables on top. Season with pepper for taste. I was going to try adding ginger but I didn't get round to it. I then had a low fat yoghurt with raspberries for dessert.

What I think I'd like to add to this is a light sauce, or some sort of dressing. I haven't found anything yet but I've got my eyes open!

Hope you enjoyed this type of post.

Love always, J xo