Loaded Turkey and Veggie Pasta

This week I decided to make a staple university meal: pasta. Pasta is always so simple to make. Just mix a bunch of stuff into some pasta sauce and boil the noodles! I needed to make something that wouldn’t take me very long as this week was very busy. I also needed something I knew would be easy and tasty to reheat, as it would be my lunch and dinner for the whole week. The only problem with pasta is it’s not the best meal for you if you’re eating it in large quantities, for example, every day. So this recipe is a very veggie and meat filled pasta, in order to try and get as many of the food groups in that I could.

As always, I loved making this pasta recipe. I love how hard it is to mess up pasta. It allows for so much experimentation with flavours. Since it’s my favourite food, I’m always excited to eat it, even 5 days later! I tried a different pasta sauce then I normally use to see if it would taste better, and it didn’t, but thats okay, because it was a learning opportunity! For this reason, I adjusted the recipe below and included the pasta sauce I normally use, because I think it tastes much better. So if you try this recipe at home, don’t be surprised if my sauce is lighter than yours in the picture, you didn’t do anything wrong. One other thing to note was I didn’t think all my pasta sauce and ingredients were going to fit into one sauce pan. So I cooked the garlic, shallots and turkey in a separate pan, and mixed it into the sauce at the end. Feel free to follow the instructions below and do the same thing as I did. However, if you do have a sauce pan that’s big enough, make sure to saute the garlic and onions first, then add the turkey, then start adding the sauce and other ingredients to the pan with the meat, cooking them all together.

Loaded Turkey and Veggie Pasta

Ingredients

(portioning is dependent on your taste, but I will include what I used)

• 2 packages (730 grams) of ground turkey breast
• 1 head of broccoli
• 227 gram bag of spinach
• 1 large carrot
• 1 package (284 grams) of grape tomatoes
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 shallot
• 1 bag (454 grams) of Black Forest Home Style Noodles (or any noodles of your choice)
• 1.5 jars (975 mL) of Tomato Pesto OR Tomato Basil Classico pasta sauce
• Half a bag of Cracker Barrel TexMex cheese.
• Dried basil (to taste)
• Dried thyme (to taste)
• Dried parsley (to taste)
• Salt (to taste)
• Pepper (to taste)
• Garlic Plus (to taste)

Instructions

• Dice the shallot, mince the garlic, peel and cut the carrot into thin slices, and cut the broccoli head into florets.
• Heat some oil in a pan over medium heat. Saute the shallots and garlic until fragrant. Add the meat and herbs/ spices of your choice (I used salt, pepper, parsley, thyme, and Garlic Plus). Fry until there is no more pink in your turkey chunks.

• Pour 1.5 jars of Classico pasta sauce into a large saucepan over medium- high heat. Place the broccoli florets, carrots, and tomatoes into the sauce and add herbs/ spices of your choice (I used basil, thyme, parsley, salt, pepper, and Garlic Plus). Stir in the herbs/ spices and cover the pan with a lid.
• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add your noodles of choice (I used 1 bag of Black Forest Home Style Noodles).
• While the noodles cook, add the bag of spinach and the half bag of cheese to your pasta sauce. Stir to incorporate. Check/ stir the pasta sauce every 5 minutes to see if the carrots are tender. When they are tender, add the meat to the sauce pan and mix it all together.

• When your noodles are cooked, strain the water out and put them back into the large pot. Add the pasta sauce into the pot of noodles and them mix together.
• Portion your pasta into your meal prep containers and sprinkle on some parmesan. Place the containers into the fridge until you’re ready to eat them.

Overall this recipe held up very well throughout the week. My only complaint would be the texture of the spinach on the fifth day, but it was something I was able to see past. Every time lunch or dinner time rolled around, I was excited, as the pasta was tasty and left me feeling very full for the day. Something I would do differently next time would be to actually use one of my two favourite pasta sauces (Tomato Pesto or Tomato Basil Classico sauce), rather than the new one. The noodles were also a new discovery for me. Although I enjoyed the taste, they made it difficult to eat the meal on the go. I normally use fusilli noodles as they are easy to stab and and eat while studying. I will likely go back to these noodles, or something similar in size, next time I make a big pasta recipe. I hope you guys get a chance to try out this recipe, or take a couple ideas for your own!

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