So...remember how earlier I was all "I'm going to get up off my lazy butt and finish my Christmas shopping?" Yeah. That didn't happen. What did happen? Some napping. Some football watching. Some sappy romantic comedy watching. I guess my lazy Saturday turned into a lazy Sunday after all.
Breakfast was Baked Banana Bread Oatmeal again, this time with less brown sugar. Perfect! Next time I'm trying Baked Apple Oatmeal. (For a picture, just look at yesterday's entry as I forgot to take one. Oops.)
Lunch was my typical Greek-style salad and the rest of last night's calzone.
And two Candy Cane Joe Joe's. I am trying to only buy one box of these bad boys this year, so I froze all of the cookies to deter mindless snacking. If I have to wait for them to thaw out (I don't like them cold, and I have no microwave) I'm hoping it will take much longer to go through the box.
For dinner, I had a huge container of really tasty leftover marinara sauce from the calzone and decided to throw together a quick -- and cheap! -- batch of baked pasta. Baked pasta is pretty much the easiest meal ever because you can add any type of pasta, sauce, cheese and veggies/meat and it always tastes good. You know why? The cheese. Melted cheese makes everything better.
For my version, I just used what I had on hand. I first cooked some whole wheat penne to less than al dente, since it was going to continue cooking while in the oven. While the pasta was boiling, I sauteed some onion, garlic, sliced red and yellow peppers, banana peppers and roasted red peppers. Once those were soft I added the marinara sauce, some of the pasta water and the drained pasta. I then layered the pasta/sauce mixture with cheese in a greased baking dish and baked for about 20-25 minutes.
Cheesy and delicious. I normally don't care too much about pasta, but this was fantastic. I must be craving carbs and cheese lately, between this and all of the pizza I've consumed in the past seven days. For more veggies in my meal, I made some easy baked "carrot fries" on the side. (Just carrots thinly sliced, tossed in extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and baked.)
Mmm...carrot fries. For all of you looking for delicious vegetable side dishes on a budget, look no further. A bag of organic carrots is 80 cents at Trader Joe's. I only used half a bag and have three servings of these beauties. That's basically free.
I'm feeling kind of snacky so I might munch on some trail mix, and then I'm off to bed early. Tomorrow morning I'm getting back on track with my strength training routine, which I've been neglecting in the past few weeks. I'm ready to pump some iron!!!
i watched that sappy romantic comedy yesterday too. the carrot fries look really good.
Posted by: page | 12/07/2009 at 05:50 PM