A quick, healthy, solo pasta lunch

I’ll freely admit something that my foodie friends find awful: I love frozen food. Love it. I eat frozen meals frequently and it has nothing to do with weight loss (although they really do help me out with portion control, my main food problem). Lunch for me is often a package of frozen vegetables over pasta.

A lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m usually eating lunch alone. I hate making a mess and taking time just to make one serving of something, but I know from experience that if I make a lot thinking I’ll save it for later, I’m more than likely to just eat it all.

But occasionally I get the urge to cook for myself, like today. Looking in my fridge I noticed I had a lot of grape tomatoes, and I needed to do something with them. Luckily, I’d seen this recipe yesterday for tomato cream sauce made with cherry tomatoes, cream cheese, and just a few other ingredients.

It looked really quick and easy, without too much prep (just slicing garlic and halving tomatoes). I just love finding recipes that use fresh ingredients that I don’t have to slave over for ninety minutes. So I went for it.

I wish I could show you a bigger picture of it, in the bowl perhaps, but I had scarfed down half of it by the time I thought to take a picture.

This recipe took me exactly thirty minutes, from idea to mouth. I made a few small changes from the original: I only made half, because I knew I would eat whatever I made. I used grape tomatoes, because that’s what I had on hand. I used basil from my garden instead of parsley, because I like the taste better. And I added some crushed red pepper flakes, for a little kick.

I mixed it with two-and-a-half ounces of penne pasta, and the entire bowl came to just 420 delicious, filling calories. Can’t wait to make this again!

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