Dreamfields Rotini pasta with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic and ground beef.
Once again I want to stress the importance of following the cooking
instructions exactly! I boil the water, set the timer (but don't hit
start yet), measure out the portion size of pasta that I want to cook.
Hit the start button and drop the pasta in the boiling water. As soon as
the 8 minutes is up I immediately remove the pasta from the stove and
drain it in the sink while rinsing with cold water to stop the cooking
process. I always measure out the portions and don't over cook the pasta
and I haven't had any problems with this pasta. It might not work for
everyone and if you notice that it stalls you when you haven't had any
other carbs then I would suggest not eating it until you're on
maintenance.
I separated the dry pasta in to 6 servings and cooked 2 servings, 1 of those servings is in this bowl for dinner and the other one is in the fridge for tomorrow. I store the sauce separate from the noodles so that I can reheat the sauce without reheating the noodles. I don't want the noodles to over cook because then your body will absorb more of the carbs that should not be digested and would increase the carb count. When cooked properly, one serving is 5 carbs plus whatever is in the sauce and veggies that you add.
I made a simple sauce with bell pepper, onions, garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, black pepper, Italian seasoning and a little parmesan cheese. You could easily use frozen onions and peppers like shown above or fresh ones if you have them available. You can use canned or fresh tomatoes depending on their availability as well. Garlic powder can also be used instead of fresh garlic. You can also cook up the ground beef ahead of time and used it the next day. This is also great which grilled chicken or even an Italian sausage that's lower in carbs. You can also skip the low carb pasta and just layer meat, sauce cheese in a pan and bake it like a lasagna. I have pictures of that in other posts. If you have high carb eaters in your house you can easily cook them some normal pasta and serve them the same sauce.
