I’ve made a lot of big, tasty, heavy meals for family dinner nights.
Manicotti. Lasagna. Stuffed hot dogs. Chicken gyros.
All delicious, but not all what I would call super healthy or calorie-light.
And over time the nutritional needs of my family attending family dinner have changed. A couple of us are doing Weight Watchers. A couple of us are small children who refuse to eat anything that isn’t chicken tenders or French fries.
To meet the needs of as many people attending family dinner as possible, I’ve had to branch out a bit when looking up recipes on Pinterest. No longer am I just looking for something tasty. Now I’m looking for something that could fit into people’s specialized meal plans as well.
Which is how we ended up with chicken bacon fettuccine alfredo in a light, Weigh Watcher’s-inspired, sauce.
Wait, let me backtrack a scootch here. There is a Facebook page that posts cooking videos on a regular basis, and it seems like everyone in my family is following them. So when they posted a video of chicken bacon fettuccine Alfredo, everyone got excited. But regular Alfredo sauce is pretty heavy, and mixed with fettuccine noodles is not going to be light on calories or carbs.
So I went to Pinterest to find an alternative. And Pinterest didn’t let me down. The sauce recipe I used included butter, garlic, flour, low-fat milk, Neufchtel, and Parmesan cheese. I was worried it wouldn’t be very flavorful as I’d never used Neufchtel before and it seemed really mild, but once it cooked up the sauce was very tasty. I put it over whole wheat fettuccine noodles, chicken breast, and turkey bacon.
This was a relatively easy recipe once I figured out what I was making and how I was substituting things (the original Facebook pasta recipe had regular fettuccine noodles and bacon, which I changed). And it turned out pretty delicious, so definitely counts as a WIN.
To celebrate the coming of Spring – and to use up some of the Moscato we had in the fridge – I also made some sweet cocktails to go with the pasta. The Moscato Strawberry Lemonade recipe I found on Pinterest called for pink Moscato, lemonade, strawberry vodka, strawberry slices, and lemon slices. I used white Moscato because it’s what we had on hand, and strawberry lemonade to make sure it was super sweet. I also left out the strawberry slices, just cause I’m not super fond of strawberries.
The cocktails also turned out pretty good. They were so sweet (and a little tart) that you couldn’t even taste the wine in them. I think they’ll make an excellent summertime evening beverage, so I’ll have to keep the recipe on hand. It was also a WIN.
SOURCE – Skinny Fettuccine Alfredo Sauce, Moscato Strawberry Lemonade
