Pasta and Bolognese Sauce
- Recipes, Stealth Ninja Vegetables
-
05 Mar 2010
Tonight, after checking out the Hadley Valley Preserve trail for the first time (it’s nice! A 2.5 mile looping trail through prairie), I tried out another one of Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious
recipes: Pasta and Bolognese Sauce (with Stealth Ninja Sweet Potatoes). This one is healthy all around, with a bunch of carrots in there, too!
I suffered a false start on this one, as I got the onion and carrots all chopped up and in the skillet, then minced a couple garlic cloves right into the pot – only to find that my garlic had gone bad while I was away last week. Oh well. Tossed it all out and started over!
Instead of garlic cloves (I didn’t trust what I had left), I used 1 tsp of Garlic Earth Italian garlic salt – an organic seasoning that my friend Becky makes.
Score another winner for the Stealth Ninja Vegetable Experiment, and another winner for all organic ingredients! This one was so tasty I very nearly licked my plate clean. Highly recommended, and easy to throw together.
The recipe serves 8, so I immediately froze half of the sauce after dinner, then portioned the remaining 3 portions in the fridge for leftovers. I love a recipe that I can get some mileage out of!
Adapted from Jessica Seinfeld's Deceptively Delicious cookbook. This one was so tasty I almost licked my plate clean!
Details- Prep Time:
15 min - Cook Time:
30 min - Ready In:
45 min
Ingredients
- 1 medium onion organic
- 2 cloves garlic organic
- 1 tablespoon coconut oil
- 3 medium carrot organic
- 1 pound lean ground beef organic
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/8 teaspoon pepper
- 26 ounces crushed tomatoes organic (1 large can)
- 8 ounces vegetable broth organic (1 can)
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 cup sweet potato puree or finely chopped raw sweet potato
- 8 cups whole grain pasta
Directions
Pre-prep: Puree 1/2 cup baked sweet potato (or, finely chopped raw sweet potato can be substituted).- Chop the onion and mince the garlic.
- Heat coconut oil in a large skillet. When hot, add the onion and garlic. Cook 3-4 minutes over medium-high heat.
- Meanwhile, chop the carrot. Add it to the skillet. Cook 3-4 more minutes.
- Turn heat to high. Add ground beef, salt, and pepper.
- Cook 3-4 minutes until the meat begins to brown.
- Add the tomatoes, broth, and sugar.
- Turn heat to low and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- In a separate pot, boil water and add pasta. Cook according to package instructions, 8-10 minutes.
- Add the sweet potato puree to the meat sauce skillet.
- While the pasta is cooking, continue simmering the meat sauce, covered, for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Drain pasta. Serve with meat sauce.
Posted: March 5, 2010 at 7:22 pm
{Tags: beef, carrot, coconut oil, onion, pasta, puree, Recipes, sweet potato, tomato}
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- Prep Time:
Real Food Challenge, Week 2
- Real Food Challenge
-
14 Feb 2010
We’ve wrapped up Week 2 in the Nourished Kitchen Real Food Challenge, and here’s how it went in my world!
First off, I’ve been caring for my sourdough starter this week. It arrived too late to do much Week 1, and it’s taking a little longer than I’d hoped to get happy this week. I suspect it’s because my kitchen isn’t very warm (68F or so). I tried a high cabinet; I tried in the oven – apparently my pilot light isn’t very warm, either. So tonight, I fed my little sourdough buddy and brought it upstairs with me. I put it next to the heat vent in the bathroom. Hopefully the cats will not get curious.
The starter is bubbling a little bit – just not a whole lot. And it keeps separating and forming liquid on the top. I’ve just been stirring the liquid back in, as the instructions that came from Cultures for Health don’t mention anything about pouring it off. I hope I’m not killing the poor thing! (Wow, it didn’t take long for me to humanize my sourdough starter!)
Week 2 kicked off with a discussion on fats for high-heat cooking. I switched to using coconut oil a couple months ago, after reading the book Skinny Bitch
. So far, I have no complaints!
Then, we got into the issue of GMO’s – which is actually the topic that led me into this entire organic adventure (including the creation of this blog). I suspect that a certain M company is actually the devil. Some things are just wrong, and blasting living cells with viruses and the like in order to splice in the DNA of different species… that’s right up there on the list. My local government representatives know who I am (and, a tip I heard a long time ago – paper letters are more effective than email, so print out those letters, stick a stamp on ‘em, and drop them in the ol’ snail mail!)
For Day #10, it was back to oils – I regularly dip bread in olive oil, but haven’t tried flaxseed oil. I’ve gotten into throwing flaxseed meal into my oatmeal and my smoothies, so why not try flaxseed oil? It’s on my grocery list.
Baking sourdough is on my list of things to do, once my starter is ready! (C’mon, lil buddy!)
Then came the Real Milk challenge. I was pretty stoked about this, as I love milk and dairy products. I drink organic milk. The article mentioned a brand of Vat-pasteurized milk from Farmers All Natural Creamery. I went to their web site to find the locations where it is sold, and was ecstatic to see two things – first, that Jewel grocery stores carry it (because there’s one down the street from me), and second, that Peapod carries it (because that’s where I get most of my groceries, delivered!) I won’t be ordering from Peapod for another couple weeks, so I decided to check out Jewel. (I had been meaning to go there to check out their selection of organic produce anyway). I was quite impressed with their organic produce selection, but pretty bummed out that I couldn’t find Farmers All Natural Creamery products.
Booo. The customer service clerk that I asked had never heard of it. I’ll have to try ordering it from Peapod next time.Day #13 looked at fermented foods. I’m a yogurt fanatic (and have just gotten into Greek yogurt too). I used to make my own yogurt a few years ago, but stopped when I moved… it’s something I plan to try my hand at again soon. I’m also interested in trying to make cheese – but that’s a whole nother story. This kefir stuff looks intriguing (particularly the anti-cancer elements). I plan to look into it some more. I saw some at Trader Joe’s the other day, but hadn’t yet read the Challenge note about kefir!
That brings us to today – Singles Awareness Day. I’m not much into chocolate, so there’s no love lost there. The most exciting thing I added to my food repertoire this week was grape tomatoes in my workout smoothie. I’m looking forward to next week and hopefully baking some sourdough bread, or maybe pancakes!
Posted: February 14, 2010 at 11:23 pm
{Tags: challenge, coconut oil, GMO, holidays, kefir, milk, Shopping, sourdough, tomato}
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