Alfredo Pasta with Broccoli and Sausage

Hooray for Friday!  Actually, this week went by pretty fast.  A week from today we will be leaving for Austin!   We’ve already rented a boat for one day when we are there to boat around Lake Travis – how beautiful is this??!!

Thanks to all of you who stopped by Brooke’s blog to congratulate her on getting to goal, you guys rock!

I was back to the breakfast parfaits yesterday.  The only difference between me and my boss’ parfait is that I use plain Greek yogurt and for her I used Chobani’s banana yogurt.  With bananas, strawberries and chocolate almond granola – so good!  Don’t envy the wallpaper in my office too much, okay.

I was all set to work out, but when I tested my blood sugar, I was 110 – perfect but too low to work out.  That’s the only problem with the parfait, it takes me a while to eat and the insulin to food consumption doesn’t match up.

You all know I make bread every weekend, but the best part is that the dough can sit in the fridge up to two weeks.  I knew I was going to be making panini’s for lunch, so the night before last I just took the dough out and let it sit on the counter overnight.  It still cooks the same, 30 minutes in the Dutch even for 30 minutes with the lid on, then 15 minutes with the lid off.

Our sammies were delicious – deli ham, roasted red pepper, baby spinach and fresh mozzarella.  If my boss could have licked her plate she would have!

For some reason, Tony isn’t a fan of red sauce anymore.  I know, he’s Italian! (well, and half French Canadian which he doesn’t like to talk about, but I wrote it because his Mom is French Canadian and proud of it! – Hi Bonnie!).  Although I think he would be fine having Scott Conant’s red sauce, but I didn’t have time for that.

Alfredo though?  He loves it.  I decided to make a lightened up version using cream cheese that I got in the 50% off bin.

Alfredo Sauce for Two

• 232 calories, 15 fat, 354 sodium, 11.5 carbs, .1 fiber and 13 protein

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 cup 2% milk
• 1/4 cup cream cheese
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
• cracked pepper
• add salt if you want, but I think the cheese is enough salt – the sodium content above is without adding additional salt

Melt butter.  Add flour and stir for a minute.  Add the milk, 1/4 cup at a time making a roux.  Remove from heat and stir in the cream cheese and Parmesan cheese. 

I added 4 ounces of sausage and a cup of broccoli to my bowl – delish!  And um, we are going to pretend to not notice that this expired in April.

Pure comfort in a bowl.  (and I may have added some crushed red pepper to mine).

Stats for Thursday:

• 1476 calories, 113 mg cholesterol, 49 fat, 195 car, 22 fiber and 70 protein
• 53% of calories from carbs, 30% from fat and 17% protein
• no exercise

I am taking a gamble on the weather and grilling at lunch today.  On the menu?  Grilled hot dogs with no bean chili, cheese (and onions, aren’t I nice!), coleslaw and Fritos.  Now rain please stay away until after lunch, thank you!

And Mel, does this look right?  This is my sourdough starter that’s been “cooking” for five days:

I hope to make sourdough bread this weekend!   Make it a great day!