Goat Cheese & Veggie Penne

Last night my friend Tiffany and I ate dinner at a place called Crepes & Corks, a cute restaurant and wine bar in Del Mar. San Diego
Restaurant Week is going on right now, an event in which 180+ restaurants in the area feature prix fixed menus at discounted prices. We split a bottle of wine and each had a salad for an appetizer, crepe for our main entrees, and gelato for dessert – for $30 each. So much fun! I had the veggie garden crepe, which was filled with tomatoes, artichoke hearts, grilled onions, spinach, and mozzarella, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. I’ve attempted to make crepes before, but they wound up being more like pancakes. I think I need to figure out the secret to good crepes and try to make em again sometime soon – and hopefully recreate this dinner! I love how crepes are so light and you can fill them with whatever your heart desires. YUM.

Today my face was feeling sore due to dental work I had done yesterday and I also had a weird sore throat thing happening, but I still wanted to do some type of workout. I decided to do a low impact gym sess, and low impact to me = elliptical time. I don’t do the elliptical very often because I feel like I get better cardio in with other forms of exercise, but today it was exactly what I wanted. Instead of just plugging away at one level the entire time, I decided to switch it up every few minutes. If you’re a regular elliptical goer, you might be interested in changing your workout up a bit and trying something like what I did today:

Now onto my dinner creation tonight and the title of this post. Quick and easy to put together and full of all kinds of healthy goodness, throwing in a small amount of pine nuts give this meal a crunchy kick. Serves 1.

Cheesy Veggie Penne

What you Need:

2 oz of multigrain penne pasta, I like Barilla Plus (that’s 2/3 cup dry) 

1 oz goat cheese, I used a Trader Joe’s fresh goat cheese medallion

1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced

Around 2 cups of baby spinach, coarsely chopped (I’m estimating here since I used 2 large handfuls)

1 TSP olive oil

1 TBSP dry toasted pine nuts

Salt, pepper, and dried basil leaves to taste

• Cook pasta according to directions. While that’s cooking, heat the olive oil up in a medium skillet over medium heat.
• Add tomatoes to the skillet and cook for just a minute, then add in the spinach. Cook just until spinach is wilted, then remove from heat.
• Once penne is cooked and drained, pour it back in the pot.
• Add the veggies to the pasta, then spoon in the cheese in a few different chunks so it can easily be spread throughout all of the pasta.
• Flavor as desired with salt, pepper, and dried basil leaves, then mix the whole thing up well. Throw the pine nuts on top, and enjoy!

Nutrition stats: 407 calories, 17 g fat, 18 g protein, 48 g carbs.

I think last night’s scoop of gelato has started me on an ice cream kick. I’m off to my favorite fro yo spot to treat myself, then I’m watching my latest Netflix movie, Water for Elephants. I’ve seen it once before and love both the book and movie.

And since I’m a big New York Giants fan and my team is playing tomorrow in the divisional championship game to get to the Super Bowl, I can’t resist saying GO GIANTS!! 😉