Arugula: a love affair

On a dark rainy Seattle night, my family was on the prowl for a restaurant we had looked up earlier. Our GPS was uncooperative and sent us to a neighbourhood high up on a hill. Though the homes were gorgeous there, none were restaurants. We were hungry and finally gave up and settled on a restaurant that looked good from the outside.

I don't remember the name of the restaurant, or where it was. The menu had few items, all of them pricey. I went with the salmon that was topped with an arugula salad. An there I fell in love. . . with arugula. It's fresh yet earthy spiciness drew me in, and so ended my days of eating boring romaine and bitter radicchio. I vowed to buy it by the truckload during our next trip to the grocery store.

Sadly I polished off my latest box last night. It was paired with delicious cannelloni compliments of nonna which I realised I had yet to photograph. To my delight, I even grabbed one of the side-of-pan burnt edge pieces. Like burnt corner lasagna and corner slices of cake, it's always the best.

Once again, I was so distracted by the arugula I finished off 3/4 of the bowl before I remembered the cheesy delicious pasta right beside it. It seems almost silly to post up a recipe for a salad since there's really no wrong way to make one but here's the recipe for the arugula salad I made last night. You'll have to ask nonna about the cannelloni.

Arugula salad
Yield: 1 salad

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon vinegar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• plenty of pepper
• 3 cups arugula
• 1/2 tomato
• small handful craisins

1. Whisk the first 4 ingredients together until well blended
2. Toss with remaining ingredients
3. Serve immediately

Creamy Avocado Pasta

We have the best adorable little grocery store on our campus. They sell more varieties of hummus than a big box store and the bread comes from a local bakery and is hea-ven-ly. I often walk through it just for fun when I have time to kill and felt compelled to buy an avocado last week.

I didn't have any specific plan in mind for it, but I like to let the food itself lead me to meal ideas. I actually purposely picked the one that was the least ripe so that I would have plenty of time to think up an avocado recipe. But eventually it was getting soft and I was running out of time. But low and behold I found this interesting recipe that saved my precious green fruit from the garbage. It's from a blog that I've been reading religiously called ohsheglows and I couldn't wait to try it.

I'm planning on running the Scotiabank half-marathon in Vancouver this June so I've been working hard on increasing the distance on my long run so I can eventually make it 13.1 miles. It's been really challenging so far but I really like having a goal to work towards. Today I ran 6 miles, almost halfway to 13.1, yay! Obviously I was in need of an amazing dinner to refuel (especially since the smoothie shop at the gym that claims to close at 7:30 decided to close early :( ) and this definitely did not disappoint.

The avocado is so creamy that it makes you think you're eating some junky pasta filled with cream, but instead you're getting loads of heart-healthy fats and over 10 grams of protein (yay). In other words, Angela at ohsheglows is a total genius and made my night. I will definitely be adding this to my 'rotation' of easy and healthy dinners. I made a few changes and  increased the yield to 3 servings, there was a lot (aka lunch tomorrow!).

Bon Appetit,

CollegeBakerGirl

Creamy Avocado Pasta

Yield: 3 servings

• 1/2 box pasta (I used catelli whole wheat spaghettini)
• 3/4 avocado
• 1.5 tablespoons lemon juice (or juice of half a lemon)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
• 1 tomato (diced)
• 1/2 cup cauliflower (chopped)
• pepper (to taste)

1. Set water to boil. Meanwhile, drizzle your peeled and smashed garlic with a little oil and roast in oven until fragrant.
2. Cook pasta until al dente, add cauliflower in the few last minutes of cooking to blanch.
3. In a food processor (I used my magic bullet), blend garlic, oil and lemon juice until smooth. Add avocado and salt and puree.
4. Drain pasta and toss in avocado mixture
5. Serve with plenty of pepper and topped with diced raw tomatoes.

*Note: Apparently this doesn't reheat well because of the avocado, but it does seem like it would be delicious cold. I'll keep you posted

1 serving:

375 calories | 10.6g protein | 16.6g fat (mostly healthy fats!)