PIN the Cottage Cheese Pasta Bake to try it later!

Cottage Cheese Pasta Bake with Mushrooms is a vegetarian pasta casserole that’s loaded with creamy goodness from plenty of cottage cheese and Mozzarella cheese! And I know warmer weather is coming, so I’m happy to share it with you before casserole season turns into salad season.

Kara and I loved this recipe, even though the final results were not overly photogenic. But the combination of pasta, mushrooms, flavorful Rao’s pasta sauce, dried herbs, cottage cheese, Mozzarella cheese, and Parmesan Cheese was such a winner.

My site has quite a few recipes for pasta with sausage, but this is a flavorful pasta casserole that has great flavors without any meat! I hope you try this recipe soon if you like the sound of these ingredients!

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PIN Spaghetti with Garlic, Chard, and Cheese to try it later!

Spaghetti with Garlic, Chard, and Cheese is a recipe that was inspired by my love of Swiss Chard back in the days when I had a garden. Chard was one of those greens I hadn’t tried before I grew it, but I liked the flavor right away. I also loved the way you can snip off chard leaves and the plant will keep producing all summer and well into the fall!

And chard is abundant in stores in the fall as well, and pasta with Swiss Chard is a classic combination! For people who haven’t tried it, the flavor of chard is stronger than spinach, but not as strong as kale, turnip greens, or mustard greens.

For years I made this with whole wheat spaghetti, but now I’m using Fiber Gourmet Light Spaghetti for a version that’s lower in carbs and higher in protein. And when I found gorgeous Swiss Chard at the grocery store recently, I got inspired to make the recipe and take new photos. So today I’m updating this recipe with better photos and with the recommendation to use my favorite lower-carb pasta, I hope you will try it!

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PIN the Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipe to try it later!

This tasty Homemade Pasta Sauce Recipe was inspired by the pasta sauce I made for many years when I lived in a house in Salt Lake where I grew lots of tomatoes and fresh herbs in my garden. In those days I’d make fresh tomato sauce with sausage and herbs every summer. And even after I moved and didn’t have a big garden any more, I still made pasta sauce with fresh herbs and canned tomatoes, simmering it on the stove and making the house smell amazing.

Then I became an Instant Pot fan and got obsessed with the idea of making Instant Pot pasta sauce with that combination of ingredients. It seemed like a no-brainer until I tried several batches of sauce that burned in the Instant Pot! Then Kara and I decided to try making a chunkier pasta sauce recipe (from the earlier days of the blog) using the Instant Pot. We experimented until we had perfected this homemade pasta sauce recipe, and it turned out to be such a winner in both the Instant Pot and on the stove!

And I decided to share both methods for the homemade pasta sauce in the same post, so people can choose the one they prefer. Whichever way you make this tasty pasta sauce (and whether you eat it with zucchini noodles or pasta) I hope you have fresh herbs from your garden; that’s what puts this over the top for me! But see my suggestions for making it without fresh herbs if that’s just not happening at your house. I hope you enjoy the recipe!

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PIN the Pepperoni Pasta Salad to try it later!

This Pepperoni Pasta Salad recipe is getting an update for a couple of reasons, and I hope you love the new version of this salad as much as we did! This is a recipe I first made a few years ago with Palmini low-carb pasta made with hearts of palm. And even though Kara and I really enjoyed some of our experiments with that pasta, eventually it was clear it was not a hit with most of my readers. Not only was the hearts of palm pasta pricey, I got feedback from quite a few people that they missed the feel of “real” pasta.

So Kara and I re-created this recipe with Fiber Gourmet Light Spaghetti, and we ended up deciding it was worth a few more carbs to get the real wheat pasta flavor you get with that option. And we also changed the name to Pepperoni Pasta Salad, since the old name no longer fit the recipe.

But you can make this with the type of pasta you prefer! If you’re a fan of Palmini Pasta, I’ll include instructions to make this salad using that for a low-carb version. And you can also make it with regular spaghetti if you don’t care that much about the carbs! Click to continue reading…

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PIN the Spaghetti Salad to try it later.

For my Friday Favorites pick this week, I’m spotlighting this favorite Spaghetti Salad Recipe that’s on the menu all summer long at my house. I first made this years ago when my sister Laurel and her family were visiting to attend the graduation of my niece Amanda, so the salad has good memories for me too!

I make this salad with Fiber Gourmet Light Spaghetti and a lot of sausage, tomatoes, and olives and only a moderate amount of spaghetti. That makes it a perfect side-dish salad for summer pot-lucks that’s relatively low in carbs for this type of dish. (Just make the Spaghetti Salad with regular spaghetti or whole wheat spaghetti if you don’t mind having more carbs.)

When I first tested the recipe with my nephew Jake I sent most of the leftovers home with him. Then the salad was so good I found myself making it again a few days later! That’s how quickly I knew that this salad would be a repeater at my house; I hope you enjoy trying it!

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PIN Tuna Macaroni Salad to try it later!

This Tuna Macaroni Salad with Green Olives is flavorful from tuna in olive oiland green olives, with lemon juice and green olive brine in the dressing. I’m mentioning that because I think macaroni salad has the potential to be boring if you don’t use strongly flavored and interesting ingredients.

We also added finely chopped celery for crunch, and some sliced green onions for more flavor. And we devoured this for lunch on the day we tested the recipe and took these photos. Besides the flavor, another things we loved about this macaroni salad with tuna is that it’s made with Fiber Gourmet Light Elbows! That made the carb count much lower than usual for this type of salad.

And pasta salad weather is here, so I’m recommending this favorite macaroni salad recipe as my Friday Favorites for the week. I hope you try it over the weekend if you’re a fan of these ingredients!

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PIN the Baked Spaghetti Casserole to try it later!

Today I’m updating this Baked Spaghetti Casserole recipe to use the Fiber Gourmet Light Spaghetti that’s become my preferred low-carb pasta, and I love being able to use a reduced-carb spaghetti that tastes exactly like regular pasta. And this favorite recipe made with Fiber Gourmet Spaghetti has only 21.9 net carbs (and 38.5 grams of protein) in a serving!

Of course I realize that option will be too high in carbs for people who are following Keto, so I’m also giving you directions for using Palmini Angel Hair Pasta (made with hearts of palm) for a version with only 11.5 net carbs, and that option is also gluten-free. And if you don’t care about carbs and/or don’t want to buy a special type of spaghetti, there are also tips for making this with whole wheat spaghetti.

Kara and I made the Fiber Gourmet version of this recipe and photographed it twice, and I do wish we had better photos to capture how delicious it was. (Some days that is just not happening.) But trust me, whichever spaghetti option you use I think you’ll find Baked Spaghetti Casserole is a comforting dinner you’ll want to make over and over!

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PIN Slow Cooker Turkey Soup  to try it later!

This Slow Cooker Turkey Soup (with Spinach and Lemon) is so delicious, and it’s perfect to make with leftover turkey! And if you don’t have leftover turkey, you can certainly make this soup with chicken instead.

This is an ultra-flavorful soup where you simmer the stock, vegetables, and dried herbs in the slow cooker for a while to create flavor. Then add orzo (or cauliflower rice) and diced cooked turkey (or chicken) and cook a bit longer. Then add spinach, cook a few minutes more, and stir in fresh-squeezed lemon juice at the end. 

The long simmering builds flavor, and you can simmer the soup for several hours on low, or do it for a shorter time on high. Adding the cooked turkey towards the end eliminates having the turkey meat shred apart. I thought this was a fresher take on the traditional slow cooker turkey soups you might see this time of year; hope you try it if you have leftover turkey!

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PIN Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce to make it later!

Cherry Tomato Pasta Sauce is a recipe I started making when the Spiralizer first came out, and I was experimenting with Zucchini Noodles. And this amazing fresh-tasting sauce made with cherry tomatoes, olive oil, sausage, garlic, and fresh herbs ended up being a recipe I make over and over.

Now years later, this is still a favorite pasta sauce recipe for me, especially when I have fresh summer herbs that need to be used! So today I’m reminding you about this amazing pasta sauce made with cherry tomatoes for my Friday Favorites pick. And if zucchini noodles aren’t really your jam, you’ll love this fresh-tasting sauce over any type of pasta!

Use your best olive oil, plenty of fresh chopped garlic, and generous amounts of chopped fresh basil, oregano, and parsley for this easy pasta sauce recipe made with cherry tomatoes. When I tested the recipe with my niece Kara, the entire time we were eating it we both kept saying over and over how good it was, and Kara reported that the leftovers were just as good when she reheated them.

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PIN the Pesto Pasta Salad recipe to make it later!

Pesto Pasta Salad is a recipe I first made with whole wheat Rotini pasta, and it was delicious! But now I’d prefer fewer carbs so I tried the recipe with some favorite lower-carb pastas. I’m updating the recipe to give three different options for this delicious vegetarian Pesto Pasta Salad!

You can make very low-carb Pesto Pasta Salad using Palmini pasta if you enjoy that low-carb pasta made with hearts of palm. You can make the salad with Fiber Gourmet Light Pasta,  a high-fiber wheat pasta that’s lower in net carbs than regular pasta. Or just make the salad with regular Rotini pasta if you don’t care so much about carbs.

And no matter which version you prefer, this might be the easiest pasta salad you’ve ever made! Make it when you have Basil Pesto with Lemon in the freezer or my favorite Kirkland Basil Pesto in the fridge! And except for the pasta, this Pesto Pasta Salad recipe uses mostly pantry ingredients that you might have in the house.

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