Mini Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta, and Mint

Its been over three months since I last made Mini Farfalle with Roasted Peppers, Onions, Feta and Mint.    I really enjoyed this dish last time I made it and I think it might have been even better tonight.  My wife and I both enjoyed dinner and we will be having more of this as left overs tomorrow night.

Photo: John Autry; Styling: Leigh Ann Ross

Since the last time I made this dish, I have started a diet in attempt to lose 30 pounds and I am over half way to my goal.   I had a nice, healthy, low calorie, delicious lunch packed for myself today and then I walked out of the house without my lunch!   I ended up going out for lunch with some guys from the office.  

We went to an Indian Buffet called Saffron in downtown San Carlos.   This place always presents a variety of options at the buffet and I love the food.   I could easily eat three platefuls of food and dessert, but since I am on a diet, I limited myself to one very modest plate of food and no dessert.   But even a plateful of Butter Chicken, Tandoori Chicken,  Yogurt Chicken, Rice, and some other stuff the name of which I don't remember, is probably pushing 800 calories, maybe more.   And the amount of salt used in the chicken recipes has got to be way over my sodium budget.   Plus, i could not pass up the naan and had to have at least one piece.   I really enjoyed the lunch, but decided I better go for something vegetarian for dinner to make up for my high calorie, high chicken lunch!

Back to the Farfalle... the Cooking Light recipe says this dish is 453 calories per serving.  I tracked and weighed everything that went into this dish; I used the same amounts used in the recipe; and the only change I made was that I used fat-free feta instead of regular feta cheese.   I came up with 362 calories per serving assuming the recipe makes four servings and I did not eat a full serving for dinner.   So, my dinner was only about 272 calories and satisfying.  

After dinner, I swam laps at the health club and swam about 3/4 of a mile and worked off some more of that high calorie lunch.   At the end of the day, assuming I had a 1,000 calorie lunch, I still came in under my daily calorie budget.  

Southwestern-Style Shimp Taco Salad

This is my favorite time of year.   The sweet corn is starting to show up in the produce section of the grocery store along with fresh peaches and cherries.   Plums are just around the corner.  

My routine was disrupted this past week because it was the last week of school for my daughter and with all the end-of-the-year activities, I didn't do much cooking worthy of noting here.   Friday night I the spice-rubbed pork tenderloin which I have written about here a few times.   This is my daughters favorite dinner and she requested it.   I served corn-on-the-cob with the pork tenderloin and everything was really delicious.   

I was out with friends Saturday night, another night I would normally cook.    Tonight for dinner, I used some of the left over corn to make a taco salad.   This is another Cooking Light recipe I found on myrecipes.com.   I made this many months ago, maybe even a year ago, and my wife really didn't like it that much.   But, this evening she suggested a taco salad using the corn, so I decided to try this dish on her again.

Photo: Becky Luigart-Stayner; Styling: Cindy Barr

I sauteed the shrimp instead of grilling them, and I marinated the shrimp in the chipotle sauce, olive oil, lime juice, and cumin for about 15 minutes before cooking.   The shrimp cook in just a few minutes so most of the work for this dinner is chopping and prepping.    The salad ingredients include romaine lettuce, tomatoes, corn, fresh chopped cilantro, green onions, black beans, and of course the shrimp.   

The shrimp smelled so good when they were cooking and they tasted just as good.   The whole salad was delicious.   The recipe says this dish makes 6 servings at 228 calories per serving.   But using just a little less shrimp than called for in the recipe, but the same amount of everything else, including the sour cream and avocado, my version of this dish yielded two nice sized salads at about 550 calories and that includes 1 oz of tortilla chips per serving at 142 calories.   This is just about perfect for dinner... especially since I was at the pool with my daughter for a couple of hours just before dinner and I was really hungry.