When you are short on time, sometimes you just throw everything together and hope for the best!
Thankfully we had some ingredients already prepped from Friday’s pizza dinner for Tuesday because after watering the mums, a Dentist appointment, and a run….it was already almost 8:00pm and I hadn’t even thought about dinner.
Again, for the most part, we try to watch the carbs during the week. I realized we had shirataki noodles. They are a decent substitute for a quick pasta dinner. There are several varieties and shapes. These are just some of them
we usually get them at our Whole Foods. I don’t find them too long that they need to be trimmed so just a little bit of a time saver. Note- we do generally eat a whole bag each but even then, they aren’t too bad for you. I put them in a strainer and rinsed them well. This is an important step because they do have a slightly funky odor to them so the rinsing helps.
While they were sitting, I started to boil some water to cook them. I then took inventory on what we had. I knew we had the sautéed kale with garlic from the other night, some caramelized onions, and fresh spinach that probably should get used. I thought of the pumpkin goat cheese and figured why not make it in to a sauce with some chicken stock.
I sautéed a couple of thinly sliced red onions I had on hand with fresh dill that was already washed and broken up in a couple turns of avocado oil. When that cooked a minute or so, I threw in the spinach. Once the spinach just started to wilt I added the caramelized onions and kale with garlic and folded it all together.
I put it on simmer so it wouldn’t overcook the greens. I warmed up some chicken stock and added it to the pan. I probably put a little too much as our sauce wound up being a little too thinned out, but it was still good. I then crumbled the pumpkin goat cheese and added some grated parmesan to the greens mix.
The noodles went in to the boiling water for 3 minutes (I think this also helps with the odor) and then I put them back in the strainer. Once I was ready to toss together and serve, I turned the heat up on the veggies and incorporated everything together with more salt and pepper. This meal really couldn’t have taken more than 10 minutes to prepare since I took advantage of what was already prepped. You can pretty much always throw something together in a pinch… just use your noodle!
Cheers!