Dinnertime: Roasted Vegetables with Orzo and Chicken Sausage

A while back, my mom gave me a recipe for Roasted Vegetables with Orzo. It looked pretty tasty, so I decided to try it out. I made a few adjustments to the original recipe to make it a more substantial (but less vegetarian-friendly) meal. It makes a ton, so it’s great if you like to cook once and eat for the rest of the week. Also, it’s pretty time-intensive (cooks for an hour, lots of veggie-chopping, etc.), so it was a good one to make on a Sunday when I had some time on my hands. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

• 1 pound asparagus, ends trimmed
• 1 medium zucchini
• 3 bell peppers
• 1 cup cherry (or grape) tomatoes, halved
• 6 scallions, chopped
• 4 Tbsp olive oil (divided)
• 1 clove garlic, crushed (I just used jarred minced garlic)
• 1 Tbsp Italian seasoning
• 3/4 tsp salt (or to taste)
• 1/8 tsp pepper (or to taste)
• 1 cup orzo
• 2 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
• 5 links chicken sausage (I use Archer Farms pre-cooked Italian chicken sausages with no casing)
• 1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted
• 3/4 cup Feta cheese (I did not use this)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Chop the asparagus, zucchini, and bell peppers into bite-size chunks. Place asparagus, zucchini, bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and scallions in a 9×13 baking dish. Add 2 Tbsp olive oil, garlic, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper. Toss well. Roast for 30 minutes, or until veggies are tender.

Add remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil to a medium saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. Add the orzo and saute until browned. Add the broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low and cook, covered, until all liquid is absorbed.

Add the orzo and chicken sausage to the roasted veggies and mix well. Top with pine nuts (and 3/4 cup Feta cheese if you like…. The original recipe called for it, but as Paul is not a fan of cheese and I’m not a fan of Feta, I skipped it). Cover the dish with foil and roast for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve hot or room temperature. Makes 10 servings (1 cup per serving); 6 Points Plus per serving

Enjoy!

SSS: Between Leftovers

This was, indeed, a leftover week. Remember that pasta I made last week? We ate that almost every single night. And I ate leftover mac & cheese for lunches/dinners all week, too. I did get creative with breakfast, though:

Egg white omelet with Canadian bacon and Fuji apples. I originally found this recipe in a Pillsbury cookbook from the Target dollar section. I modified it a little bit. I screwed it up a bit the first time I made it (that’ll happen when you make breakfast before having coffee…). The second time, it turned out much better (and I made it with egg substitute):

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Fuji apple, thinly sliced
• 2 slices of Canadian bacon, cut into thin strips
• 3 eggs/egg whites, lightly beaten (or 1/2 cup of egg substitute)
• 1 tsp maple syrup (I used sugar free)

Cook the apple slices in a small fry pan (I used an 8 inch omelet pan) for ~5 minutes, until they’ve softened. Add Canadian bacon and cook for another minute or two. Remove apples and bacon from the pan; put in a bowl and mix in the syrup. In the omelet pan, melt a bit of (light) butter. Pour your eggs in and cook as you would an omelet, pulling up the edges so that the liquid can fall to the bottom of the pan. Cover and cook until set, ~3 minutes. Once set, add half of the apple mixture to half of the omelet. Fold over the other half of the omelet and let cook for another minute or two. Plate your omelet and top with the rest of your apples and Canadian bacon. Enjoy!

I also used my new All Clad panini press/grill pan to make a panini with the same basic idea today: light bread, Laughing Cow Light Swiss Cheese, fat free cheddar, Canadian bacon, and Fuji apple. It was fabulous. Totally guilt free, but didn’t taste like it! I’ll miss having all this free time to make delicious breakfasts and lunches…. : (

SSS: Partial fail

Hey, readers. Last week, I mentioned that I’d be doing a lot of cooking this week. I did cook quite a bit: Teriyaki chicken and veggie kebabs with whole wheat couscous on Monday night, rotini with tomato sauce and turkey sausage on Wednesday night, and baked macaroni and cheese Friday night. However, I kept forgetting to take pictures. I managed to snap a couple of the pasta leftovers:

This didn’t turn out quite the way I planned. I used the sauce recipe from a chicken Parmesan recipe I have, but modified it a little to make a bigger batch (and I added some cut up turkey Italian sausages). I was running a little behind in making dinner, and Paul needed to leave at a certain time for bowling, so I didn’t give the sauce enough time to reduce down. The end result was a little watery, but still tasty. The recipe for this sauce is a little sweet, which I like. It has canned tomatoes, various herbs, balsamic vinegar and some sugar. I prefer chunky sauces like this rather than liquidy sauces. These feel a little more hearty to me. I’m planning on throwing the leftovers in the oven with some cheese on top later in the week. Delicious.

Yesterday, I had grand plans to make a loaf of banana bread, but after thawing one of my (dozen) frozen bananas, I realized I didn’t have a couple of other very important ingredients. Hungry Girl came to the rescue, though, and I made Funky Monkey Squares from the Hungry Girl 200 under 200 cookbook. They’re pretty tasty, though I wish they were a bit more chocolaty. But that’s just because I’m a chocoholic. Don’t mind me. Seriously, though, people. If you don’t have the Hungry Girl cookbooks, you need to go get them. Now. Stop reading, go to the bookstore, and buy the books. Even if you’re not on a constant diet like I am, the food is delicious and easy to make.

I’m off to make banana bread, now that I have everything I need. Enjoy your Sunday!

SSS: Breakfast time

I did some more baking this week. Paul had a rough day on Thursday (woke up on the wrong side of the bed–I’ve definitely been there before), so I made him some brownies to help cheer him up. I’m a big big fan of No Pudge! brownies. If you’ve never tried them, you absolutely have to. They’re fat free and 120 calories/brownie (low points, if you’re a counter!). I love gooey, chewy brownies, and these have the perfect texture. I’ve only ever tried the original variety (as that’s all that’s available in my grocery stores), but am super intrigued by the other flavors (cappuccino, mint, and raspberry). I’ve made a brownie ice cream cake with them in the past, which was fabulous as well. (Oh, and they’re not too bad microwaved and topped with some Skinny Cow ice cream, either….)

Anyway, the brownies aren’t the point to this entry–I just had to sing the praises of No Pudge! brownies. LOVE. Onward.

SSS Returns, now with more calories!

Hello, dear readers. So sorry for the months-long hiatus from the regular posts. I’m not promising that they’re back with any regularity, but I’ll give it a shot.

Let’s start this one off with a riddle. What do you get when you cross chocolate chip cookie dough:

with chocolate brownies?