Lately, I have not been in the mood to cook. My bank account is not thanking me for the takeout I’ve been ordering this past month and a half (it’s partly due to a concussion, so I don’t feel too bad being lazy).
To rectify my bad habits, I’m trying to cook more, taking these three four words into consideration: quick, easy & budget friendly.
I had a lot of these item’s on hand, which made my trip to the store almost unnecessary. Most of the time I cook dairy free, gluten free and red meat free. This pasta hit all those marks!
What I had in my cupboard/freezer:
- 1/2 box Banza Penne (chickpea) pasta
- 1 lb turkey burger
- Pre-chopped (frozen) sweet onions*
- Pre-chopped (frozen) red & green bell pepper mix**
What I picked up at the store:
DIRECTIONS
I simply cooked 1/2 of the Banza pasta; however, I did brown all the turkey burger and use the entire can of pasta sauce. After I had browned my turkey burger I threw in maybe 1/4 cup of the pre-chopped onion and maybe 1/2 cup of the red & green bell peppers. After the peppers and onion had heated up, I added the pasta sauce and stirred until simmer.
I made three servings of pasta, one (probably oversized) serving to eat after I made it and two servings that went into microwavable containers for the rest of the week. The remainder of the meat sauce went into the freezer, which will provide 2-3 meals once I cook more pasta.
The Organic Arrabiata Pasta Sauce was amazing. The reason I chose it was because the front of the jar said “made with a spicy blend of tomatoes, extra virgin olive oil & spices. I am a sucker for spicy food-the pasta was chunky, hardy and filling.
*I like to cook pre-chopped onions in my freezer, you can buy them in the freezer section, but I find it just as easy to chop up leftover onion after I cook something that requires a fresh onion. I simply chuck it up, throw it in my food processor and put the chopped onion in a freezer zip-lock bag.
**After making a few gluten-free pizzas from scratch (which I then cut into servings and froze), I had leftover red and green bell peppers, like my onions I chopped them up and threw them in a freezer bag. Note: I keep these chunks a bit bigger (I don’t put them in the food processor).
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