Sneaking Some Extra Nutrition Into Your Meals

Need a few ideas for easy, healthy dinners that pack a nutritional punch?  Try these.  All too often we just "pick something up" because it seems like too much trouble to make anything.  If you have the ingredients on hand, you will probably save time-and your waistline-by cooking at home.  We have several "go to" meals at my house for long, late days.  They can be ready in 20 minutes or less and involve little or no chopping.   It is great to use fresh vegetables when you have time, but frozen have nearly the same nutritional value and can cut your prep time considerably.  

Pasta With Hot Italian Turkey Sausage

Pasta (whole wheat or rice) prepared al dente

1 jar marinara sauce (no meat or cheese)

1 can petite diced tomatoes

1 cup diced onion and 1 cup diced green peppers (I use bagged frozen)

1 cup frozen chopped spinach

1-2 teaspoon chopped or minced garlic

2 hot Italian turkey sausage, thawed.

Directions:

Add 1 T olive oil to a large, deep pan and add onion, green pepper, garlic and sausage, squeezed from casings.  I add some Italian seasoning and dried or fresh basil too.  Cook until sausage is done.  Add spinach and cook until hot.  Add tomatoes and heat for 1-2 minutes then add sauce and simmer for 5-10 minutes (however long it takes to finish the pasta).

Toss sauce with pasta and top with a pinch of parmesan.  This takes traditional spaghetti to a whole new nutritional level!

Wild Rice Pilaf

This is an easy dish to throw together while you are home and doing other things.  It takes an hour to cook, but you only have to check on it and stir it.

2 cups Wild Rice or wild and whole grain combo– uncooked.

3 cups chopped veggies, including carrot, onion, celery (you can use frozen, pre-chopped– they even make bags with all 3 in them already).  A cup or 2 of frozen asparagus makes a really tasty addition too.

2-3 teaspoons chopped or minced garlic

3-4 cups of vegetable broth (organic is best) or chicken broth (no msg)

1 bay leaf

Sea salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

In 1-2 T olive oil, cook veggies until mostly soft (5 min) with garlic.  Add rice, broth, bay leaf and 3 cups water.  Simmer for 50-60 minutes, stirring occasionally and adding more water if it is getting dry.  It is really hard to overcook this as long as you keep enough water in it so that it doesn’t burn.  When it's done, fish out the bay leaves.  I cook this on Sunday afternoon and save it for a night when I am in a hurry or take it for an easy meatless lunch. 

Recipe Switch Out– Turkey Tacos

Use ground turkey instead of beef with taco seasoning and add chopped green peppers, onion, tomatoes and jalapeño or habanero peppers.  Top with salsa, lettuce and guacamole.  Use cheese sparingly.  

TAKE AWAY TIP:  Adding extra veggies to any meal increases the nutritional value, decreases the calories per serving and increases the total volume.  It will turn 1 jar of pasta sauce into the volume of 2 or 1 lb of taco meat into enough to feed twice as many people. If you have frozen on hand, it doesn't add more than a few minutes to your cooking time, either.