How about a gluten free pasta recipe that will help with weight loss and feeling great? How about creating pasta using vegetables that tastes great? Seriously! Stick with me, it will be worth it, I promise!
I love(d) pasta for most of my life. I would eat about half a pound of pasta most nights without realizing what it was doing to my body. Or maybe I realized what the gluten, the carbs, the non-nutritious pasta was doing to my body. Last June I decided to remove pasta from my eating plan and wondered if it would help with my weight loss. And of course it did – you can read my first week experiences around how much better I felt, how much weight I lost and why this ugly thing called “candida” could be holding you back from losing weight and feeling good.
Make sure to check out my list of awesome lunch salad recipes – these salads will get your energy and your weight loss up!
There are other types of pasta made from grains like spelt that are better for you. But I decided that I would rather just remove the pasta completely. The great news is that I have a recipe for you today that you, your kids, your dinner guests might not even realize it’s not regular old spaghetti but is amazingly healthy!
To make this recipe, you will want to use either a “spiralizer” (officially called a Tri-Blade Plastic Spiral Vegetable Slicer) or a vegetable peeler (this will make more of a lasagna noodle).
One of the questions I am often asked on the Smoothie a Day newsletter is around if you can replace one vegetable or fruit for another. I just wanted to mention that with this recipe you can play around and try different combinations. I’ve found that the zucchini and cucumber seem to create the longest, most fun strands of spaghetti – one strand I picked out was over 3 feet long!! For example, in the photos you will see radishes around the outside – I’ve found that carrot works better and that’s what is in the recipe below.
- 1 large green zucchini
- 1 large cucumber
- 2 large roma tomatoes or 6 campari tomatoes
- 1 red pepper
- 2 large carrots
- 1 lemon
- salt and pepper to taste
- any herbs you prefer (I used a dried italian blend)
- create the pasta from the zucchini and the cucumber
- pat out the water from both vegetables
- place pasta into a large bowl for tossing
- create 1 inch strips from the tomatoes, carrots and the red pepper
- toss the spaghetti with the veggie strips and herbs
- top with the pesto sauce recipe below
- garnish with lemon slices
The pesto sauce recipe comes from Felicia at A Simply Raw Life. Felicia recommends using a food processor which I do not have so I used my small personal blender and it worked just fine. You will need:
- 1/3 cup pine nuts
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
- 1 bunch fresh basil leaves
- salt and pepper to taste
I hope you enjoy this gluten free pasta recipe as much as I do. I made this dish on a live raw foods cookoff last week and so far I am in the lead in the voting!
Check out some other groovy posts:
Frankly I would never consider eating a vegetable that looks like pasta but after seeing these amazing photos, it is now a MUST TRY!
what an awesome photo!