Foodie Friday: How to lose weight eating pasta

It's Foodie Friday! Foodie Friday is my weekly feature that gives you a window into my kitchen. I love to cook, I love to eat, I love to read cookbooks, and I love to inspire people to give vegan food a chance. Thus, Foodie Friday was whipped up and baked to perfection.

I lied. You can't stuff yourself silly with pasta all the time AND lose weight. I know, I'm a false advertiser. But don't despair, carb loaders, because I have the next best thing.

One of the ways that I've achieved the weight loss that I mentioned yesterday is by cutting pasta out of my diet. I love it, and I used to eat it more than once a week, sometimes several days in a row when I had leftovers. That was clearly doing nothing for my waistline! Or, more accurately, it was doing something for my waistline--making it expand.

Now that I'm making better food choices, I've been using "noodles" made out of other things. They don't taste like wheat pasta, but I like them based on their own merits.

First, kelp noodles. I buy Sea Tangle's version at Whole Foods, and you can also buy them by the case directly on the company's website, which I might do next time if the price is better than what Whole Foods is charging. Kelp noodles have a vegetable crunch to them that to me is most comparable to bean sprouts. They don't really taste like anything, but they take on flavor well. And best of all, they are fat-free and extremely low-calorie. I eat them cold with crumbled extra-firm tofu, black sesame seeds (regular white ones are fine too, but I like the contrast of the black ones), and soy sauce. Sea Tangle has a collection of recipes that I plan to try after I make my next Whole Foods pilgrimage.


My other go-to "pasta" is carrot peelings! The way I prepare them is similar to this recipe, but I prefer to use sliced cherry or grape tomatoes instead of jarred pasta sauce. I also add chopped onion or shallots, and put in a crapload more garlic. I used a splash of white wine in the batch I made for dinner last night, and it was great! In the picture below, I tossed in some fresh parsley, but it's also good with dried herbs like basil and oregano.


This is my new theme song:


I take no responsibility for the chorus sticking in your head all day.