A big bowl of pasta.

Sometimes that's just all you want. It's comforting, it's pretty easy to prepare and it just hits the spot on a cold, rainy night like tonight. I love pasta and it's probably one of the most prepared foods in my kitchen. For years, I was always aware that too much white flour pasta is just "carb and calorie" overload which leads to weight gain etc. etc. But recently I've become more concerned not so much with carbs and calories, but with processed foods and how a diet with a majority of it is bad for your body. Here's an excerpt from an article which talks about processed foods, in particular refined white flour (which regular pasta is made from):

Refined flour has had the brown husk of the grain stripped away, leaving the white, refined starch found in white bread, white rice, pasta, cookies, and numerous other junk foods. Without the fibrous husk, refined starches are broken down quickly into sugar and absorbed immediately into the bloodstream causing glucose levels to rise, and increasing the risk of obesity.

So that's not such good news. But don't get me wrong, I am not totally against things like white rice and pasta. You will have to pry my rice cooker full of Thai white jasmine rice from my hands and I will always make cakes and cookies with white flour and I will not give up white flour pasta. It's just that I need to balance things out but by eating more whole foods that have not been stripped of their nutrients. Which is why I'm over the moon about this brown rice pasta that I can now get at Trader Joe's for $2. It's lovely and I find tastes so much better than whole wheat pasta. A few days ago I tried the brown rice fusilli and it was great. My husband and I could not tell the difference between this and regular pasta. Today I got some spaghetti which I had with a luscious mushroom red wine spaghetti sauce that had been simmering for a few hours. I accidentally overcooked the spaghetti (D'oh!) so it was a wee bit mushy but my sauce rocked. I used this recipe but added mushrooms. Next time I have to keep a good eye on the pasta while it cooks.




Sprinkled with "Parmezano Sprinkles" which is just almonds, miso paste, nutritional yeast and salt ground into a powder. It's yummy!