Shrimp Pasta || Recipe + Pictorial!

I came up with this recipe when I was starving and broke haha. Therefore, I searched the fridge & pantry for something to whip up together. Turns out, I made a super delish dish! What's so great about this is that there are so many things that can be substituted, so there's no reason to be starving when you have some of these [or similar] ingredients in your kitchen!

Things You'll Need:

• Shrimp [I used raw, but you can pick up pre-cooked] about 30
• Spices
• Olive Oil
• Organic pasta sauce
• Feta cheese crumbles *optional*
• minced garlic *optional*
• Spinach
• Whole wheat pasta

Pre Heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Cook your pasta according to the package directions

I used a pretty hefty amount of noodles because I wanted to make extra for leftovers.

While the noodles are cooking...

Season your shrimp and put them on a pan with aluminum foil.

I find that this speeds up the cooking time tremendously. Bake them in the oven for about 5 minutes or until they turn pink. [they look pink above because of the chili powder]

Drain your noodles 

Drizzle them with oil so they won't stick together without the water and toss them back into the pot you cooked them in.

Add 1 1/2 TBSP of olive oil to a pan with med-high heat.

Add 1/2 TBSP of minced garlic. [I am a HUGE garlic lover, so if you're not, add less or omit this step all together.]

Add a handful of fresh spinach to the pan.

This is all the spinach I had left, otherwise more would've been added :(

Cook until the spinach is wilted.

Add 2 TBSP [to start] of organic pasta sauce.

Pour in shrimp & noodles. Toss around to coat everything with the pasta sauce.

I added about 3-4 more TSBP of pasta sauce, just eyeballing it.

Top with feta cheese [or Parmesan] and VOILA!! Delicious shrimp pasta!

Dont have shrimp? Use grilled/baked chicken. 
Out of feta? Parmesan works just as well! 
No spaghetti noodles? Try it with fettuccine or even egg noodles! Use your imagination!

I hope you enjoyed this recipe and you'll try it soon!!

Egg White Muffin Cups || Step by Step

I think breakfast is the hardest meal for me to actually make an effort to eat. Either I'm just getting off my 3rd shift job and I just want to crash in bed, or I've stayed up late and don't wake up during "breakfast" hours.

I'm saying all this because I want to make eating breakfast as easy as possible, so there aren't any kinds of excuses. I decided to look up a recipe for egg white cups and they're basically baked egg whites in a muffin tin. Super easy to make and you can make quite a few and store them in the fridge for easy access.

Things You'll Need:

• 1 cup of Egg Whites [I use the kind that comes in a carton, but you can separate the eggs the old fashioned way]
• 2 large eggs *optional* [I like the flavor the yolks give, but you could easily add more egg whites to make up the space]
• 2 slices of turkey bacon *optional* [Or, your meat of choice]
• An array of veggies. [I used spinach, grape tomatoes, and mushrooms]
• Seasonings! [I used Mrs. Dash Original Flavor, a little of the Mrs. Dash Steak flavor, and pepper]
• Cheese *optional* [I used part skim, low-moisture mozzarella from Whole Foods]
• Olive oil or an oil spray
• Muffin tin
• Muffin paper cups *optional* [I didn't use them and they didn't stick]

What You Do:

Preheat your oven to 350F

Oil your muffin tin and place your meat of choice on the bottom [skip this this step if you've decided to just have veggies].

Place the tin in the oven and allow the bacon to cook for 10 minutes.

While the bacon is cooking, chop up all of the veggies you're going to put in the cups.

Combine the egg whites, eggs, and seasonings in your bowl and stir.

Place the veggies down into the cups.

Pour the egg mixture over the veggies, almost to the top.

Top with a sprinkle of cheese.

Bake in the oven for 20-25min, or until you get the texture you prefer

Use a butter knife to slide along the edges to get the egg whites out. It should come out smooth if the tin was properly oiled.
Add extra cheese if desired and enjoy!!

Store the extra muffin cups in an air tight container in the refrigerator for up to a week or freeze. Remember to thaw in the refrigerator the night before!  Bon Appétit!!
 

I hope this helped you if you're not really a breakfast person like me!

So WHAT! Wednesday ::Health Edition::

I'm linking up again with Shannon from Life As I Dew for SWW!

This Week I'm Saying So WHAT! If:

• I didn't remember to link up last week. OOPS!
• I decided to say "eff it" on Mother's Day and ate two ice cream sandwiches and some yeast rolls from Texas Roadhouse. I needed those cheat things!
• I still haven't bought any shoes even though my shins hurt like crazy when I run. My money always seem to have some other priority!
• I got discouraged when I took a month progression picture and I didn't see much difference at all :(
• I've begun to abhor cooking all my meals. I'm SO lazy! OMG
• I give most of my money to health food stores and my mom complains. I only want the best for my body!
• Brown rice sushi from Whole Foods has become my secret indulgence. I may or may not get some every other week.
• I'm having to ween myself off only being able to eat a banana if its with peanut butter.
• My body is shrinking, but my stomach is holding on like a MOFO. What the crap?!

That's all I can think of. What are you saying So WHAT! to this week?

Motivational Monday

We've all had those days where you eat something you know you shouldn't have or didn't work out as much as we would've liked to and feel bad about it.

 Well...

Simply put: It's done and there's nothing you can really do about it except get up, move on, and make the next day even better.

Do. Not. Give. Up. It'll ALL be worth it in the end!

Great Veggie Find For People On The Go!! ::Eat Smart Vegetable Medley::

I don't know about you, but I am NOT for cooking all of my stuff from scratch. If I can find a great products already pre-made that will make my life easier, you better believe I'm grabbing it!! Have you seen my favorite salad dressing? So when my mother brought these veggies baggies home, I was SO happy! No preservatives. No "light sauce". No extra additives! 

Eat Smart has so many different types of these bags!! Don't like carrots? They have one with just cauliflower and Broccoli! Does the thought of anything else green besides broccoli make you gag? They have a bag with just broccoli in it and so many more! You just pop this in the microwave on a plate for 4-6min and you have fresh steamed vegetables in a snap! I love this invention and I'm so happy they make these for people who are maybe short on time but NEED to get their veggie fix. Thanks Eat Smart!! P.S. I used the broccoli from one of these bags in my Shrimp Fried Rice :)

Motivational Monday

Go get the body you deserve!

Easy Shrimp Fried Rice

I'm going to tell you now that I don't have a recipe lol. I didn't use one and it came out fine, so I'm just going to give you the idea, tell you what I did, and send you on your merry way! :)

Looks delicious, right?


I made this for two nights straight and it would've been good for an entire week, I'm sure.

So! Basically, I boiled some short grain brown rice [that took the longest] and while that was working, I seasoned and sauteed my shrimp in a pan. I used Mrs. Dash, salt, pepper, & chili powder, but you can use whatever you want. After the shrimp were pink, I added a little EVOO and some minced garlic and let that simmer for about a minute. I then added the brown rice and the broccoli and let them "fry" a tad bit. And VOILA! Transfer it to a plate, add some low-sodium soy sauce *optional* and chow down! Of course, you can add different veggies and scrambled egg, but I didn't have time to!


This can be done with chicken too. I hope you enjoy your Chinese done at home!!

Latest Obsession:: Stonewall Kitchen Cilantro Lime Dressing

For a while, I'd gotten burned out on eating salads and just the thought of eating another one made my skin crawl.

But, while in Whole Foods and couple weeks ago, I picked up some salad mix [this kind] and so I had to get dressing. I knew I didn't want any with a bunch of preservatives because I'm eating clean. 

Could I make my own dressing? Yes. Do I want to? No. 

The one I decided to pick was Stonewall Kitchen's [they included no Xanthan Gum] Cilantro Lime dressing.

Ingredients: Canola Oil, Cider Vinegar, Pure Olive Oil, Salt, Spices, Dried Minced Garlic, Natural Lime Flavor, Dried Lime Granules, Cilantro Oil.


I'm a little weirded out by "natural lime flavor", what the hell could that be? But as you can see, that hasn't stopped me from using it!! It is extremely tart, so if you don't like those types of dressings, I suggest you skip this one. They have other flavors though. I can't be certain, but I think some of them do contain Xanthan Gum.


I've used this dressing on my salads and also as a marinade for my grilled chicken. It's delicious both ways! {I really want to make cold pasta salad with this. Yum!}

This was $6-7 at Whole Foods and I'm sure it's available at other health food stores.

What's your latest obsession??

Eating Clean

I've never been one to diet. I mean, I've done them, but they never stuck.

Most don't.

So, I decided to try out eating clean. I'd seen people talk about it before, but never really knew what it was. I was introduced to it by Feminista Jones on twitter and her eating clean challenge "Sexy Shred" [Click here for more info]. It's really changed the way I look at food.

Eating clean, dumbed down, is basically eating food that hasn't been processed in any way. You're eating food in it's natural state and, therefore, getting all of the nutrients that were meant to go into your body but got lost during processing [how's that for a run-on sentence?].

I've always looked at ingredients before, but it's nice to now be able to pronounce and really know what everything means. You saw my peanut butter post. It had two ingredients!! I start to think what are all the extra unpronounceable ingredients in there for anyway?!

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words....

Sometimes the scale is your enemy.

Sometimes your efforts seem worthless.

And then you take a side-by-side picture and suddenly your doubts and second guessing subside....

49lbs down.

SO WHAT! Wednesday ::Health Edition::

I'm linking up with Life After I Dew  for a SO WHAT! Wednesday ::health edition::

This Week I'm Saying So WHAT! If:

• I ate a fried Reese's when I went to the fair. It only comes once [maybe twice] a year!
• I could not finish the Jillian Michaels workout on YT. She's evil & clearly a robot.
• I'm addicted to peanut butter. I eat it with fruit and veggies, so it's kinda good. Right?
• I don't prep my meals, I'm too lazy.
• My motivation to cook all of my meals has completely gone out of the window. [See Above]
• I almost stop at Taco Bell every time I drive past it just for a Baja Blast Freeze. It looks SO good!
• I haven't picked out new workout shoes because none of the ones I need are cute and I want cute shoes!!
• I don't feel like cooking, I eat PB & Bananas to fill me up [I know, I know, not the best]
• I think Sexy Shred is too time consuming for me. I may back out "/

What are you saying SO WHAT! to this week??

Snack Obsession

Peanut Butter.

I'm obsessed with eating it. 

With celery. With bananas. On it's own!!

I literally have to tell myself to put the spoon down! Sad right?

I use the Whole Foods brand. It doesn't have any added sugar and there are only two ingredients: Peanuts & salt. I do add honey because I like my PB a little sweeter. NOM!!