Pesto Sauce Alternative

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CrabNebula
CrabNebula Posts: 1,119 Member
edited April 2016 in Recipes
Yesterday, I was looking for something to do with a bag of ww penne for husband and kid and my Pasta Zero. I came across this recipe from Giada for Penne w/Spinach Sauce.

For the first time ever, I actually had all the ingredients for a recipe that looked good and wanted to make. I read the reviews and trusted them and my gut about this recipe needing help, so I did the following:

Food Processor:

3oz goat cheese
3oz 1/3 fat cream cheese (I think next time I will just use Greek yogurt and/or sub 1/2 an ounce with parm)
I didn't have anymore fresh spinach so just used the spinach I cooked down the day before
Fresh basil
Fresh Italian flat leaf parsley (the basil and parsley were in equal proportions)
Moar garlic
1.25 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon of course ground black pepper
1/2c of white wine
1Tbsp of lemon juice
5-6 strips of sun dried tomatoes (not the kind in oil)
1c of pasta water
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Add Ins:

Grape tomatoes
Grilled chicken breast strips
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This was actually really good. My husband ate some of it then asked what I used to make it. I told him and he said it was odd because whenever you see green pasta, you automatically assume it is really oily/greasy, but this was not, so he wanted to know what I did. I told him it wasn't regular pesto with pine nuts and olive oil. There was no oil in it, fats just coming from the goat cheese and cream cheese for a total of 420 calories. I will get about 8-9 servings out of this, so not bad at all compared with traditional pesto which can by itself be a gut busting 200-300 cals per serving alone. This is about (or more depending) half that. Tasted pretty good with the Pasta Zero fettecuine, but did dye the noodles green.

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