Pesto Pasta Salad

I know I have vegetarians who read my blog. Although this post mentions “chicken” in the recipe, it can be left out or substituted for some other form of protein…

Nicole over at Life’s a Beach recommended Rocco Dispirito’s Now Eat This!: 150 of America’s Favorite Comfort Foods, All Under 350 Calories (not the Eat This Not That). She also recommended Now Eat This! Diet: Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks Eating 6 Meals a Day! book (not the Eat This Not That Diet). So when Costco had both of his books, I bought them both.

Rocco takes recipes and modifies them to make them just as tasty but more healthy. GREAT idea!!

On the back of Now Eat This! Diet is a picture of “Chicken Pesto Pasta”. Well, you know how much I LOVE pesto – especially my Basil Almond Pesto so I knew I had to give the recipe a try.

Before Rocco modified the recipe it was 103 grams fat grams and 1535 calories! UGH! In one serving!!!!

After he modified it… 10 fat grams and 385 calories! WOW! HUGE difference.

In usual form, I modified the recipe. He uses pine nuts for his pesto, I prefer almonds. I added more garlic. He uses sour cream, I prefer olive oil, but I went along with his recipe and used light sour cream. He also adds crushed red pepper. Interesting… I hadn’t ever done that, but went along for good measure. 😉

The dish was really good.

I was in a big rush so I didn’t get step-by-step pictures, but will follow up with another post with more details! Basically, pesto (made with sour cream instead of oil), pasta, protein (chicken in this case), grape/cherry tomatoes, cheese and herbs… YUMMMMMMM! 😀

Have you tried my pesto recipe yet?
signature