Today I’m excited to share a guest post with you by Catherine Cockrill! She’s currently finishing up her dietetic internship with Virginia Tech (my internship alma mater), and she’s been working with me over the past few months, learning the ropes of blogging, food photography, and social media–and now publishing her own post.
She came up with this recipe especially for Veggie Quest: It’s gluten free, vegan, and 100% vegetables! It’s higher in fat with a creamy avocado pesto sauce, but you can easily get away with using half the avocado if you’re watching your fat intake. I can vouch that it’s delicious, and we had a blast cooking together and taking the photos. I’ll let her take it from here!
Guest Post: Catherine Cockrill
Hello! It’s wonderful to be a guest blogger on Veggie Quest! My name is Catherine and I’m a dietetic intern with Virginia Tech, living with my family in the Northern Virginia area. I attended Virginia Tech for first undergrad, then graduate school, and now I’m out for one last certification in nutrition. (Needless to say, I’m a Hokie through and through.) I love triathlons, horses, food, and just being outside in the sunshine.
Now that we’ve gotten the introductions out of the way, I’m very excited to be sharing a new springtime recipe with all the plant-based, gluten-free readers out there!
Vegan Zucchini Noodle Pesto Pasta
I stumbled upon this recipe while kick-starting a whole-food diet, and I have to say that I absolutely loved it! Luckily when I started this lifestyle change and told my family I wanted to cut certain foods from my diet, they were totally on board. What I loved about this challenge was that it made me look up new recipes and get out of that rut that’s so easy to fall into, eating the same meals each week with not a lot of variety or flair. For example, instead of pasta we started using our spiralizer to make our own veggie noodles. And so sprouted the inspiration for this meal, adapted from the blog C it Nutritionally.
This recipe takes zoodles and pairs them with a delicious pesto sauce that’s gets its fat from avocado and veggies from the noodles, without even missing the pasta. Avocados are a good source of fiber, monounsaturated fatty acids, and many vitamins and minerals needed for energy and healthy cell function. The cherry tomatoes contain an antioxidant called lycopene, which is linked to decreased risks of heart disease and cancer. Many people know about carrots and the benefits for eye health, but did you know that they can also help prevent heart disease, reduce high blood pressure, and keep your digestive tract happy and healthy? Combine those benefits with garlic’s antioxidant allicin, which also helps digestion, can fight infections, and reduce high blood pressure and you truly have one super tasty, nutrient-dense powerhouse of a meal!
Vegan Zucchini Noodle Pesto Pasta
Equipment
Ingredients
Squash Pasta
- 3 medium zucchini
- 2 large carrots
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes halved
- Italian seasoning to taste
Avocado Pesto Sauce
- 1 cup unsweetened almond milk or other favorite plant milk
- 1 avocado, chopped
- 3 cups raw spinach loosely packed
- 1½ tsp dried basil or 10 leaves fresh basil
- 1¼ tsp granulated garlic or 1 clove garlic, minced
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
Instructions
Squash Pasta
- Wash produce and peel carrots.
- Pre-heat oven to 350F and prepare a baking sheet with tinfoil and cooking spray.
- Place tomato halves, cut side up, on the baking sheet. Sprinkle with Italian seasoning and place in oven. Cook for about 30 minutes, or until tomatoes are slightly wilted.
- Spiralize your zucchini into noodle-like strands. Set aside.
- Take a peeler and peel long strands of carrots until you have peeled the entire carrot into long, thin carrot “noodles.” Add to zucchini.
- Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat and add all “noodles”. Add 2-3 Tbsp water and cover. Let noodles steam until desired consistency, or about 12-15 minutes. Stir occasionally to keep cooking consistent.
Avocado Pesto Sauce
- Add all ingredients into blender and blend on high until well mixed and no chunks or leaves remain.
To Plate Dish
- Serve out ¼ of the cooked zucchini noodles, top with ¼ of the roasted tomatoes, and pour desired amount of pesto sauce over top (you can warm the sauce lightly in a saucepan if desired but do not bring to a boil; the zucchini noodles should warm the sauce otherwise).
- Best enjoyed immediately!
Nutrition
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I'm Lee, an RD thriving on a healthy plant based diet.
HI Lee and Catherine! Catherine, your recipe looks yummy! I always like it when blog posts remind us of all the healthy properties of whole foods, like you do with the carrots and the garlic. Good work! And I bet you had lots of fun working with Lee! Thank you!
Thanks Maria! We did have fun, and ended up with yummy food afterwards, too. :0)
Kitchen tip- a quick way to halve cherry tomatoes is to lay them out in a single layer. Slice them with a serrated bread knife , gently holding your non-knife hand on the tops of the tomatoes.
Hi Debalina, great minds think alike! I do something similar with a plate on top, a hack I think I found on Twitter. 😀 Works awesome for grapes, too!