Blog number 20!

I came home for my "weekend," which is now Tuesdays and Wednesdays to find that Dan had picked up our first CSA!  We had a ton of carrots and I instantly thought of making carrot cake!

I discovered a website called SparkRecipes that lets you analyze the nutritional information of your recipe so I decided to see how some substitutions on the carrot cake recipe I usually use would affect the nutritional value.  So instead of all that oil, I used 3/4 c applesauce and 1/2 c oil.  I also omitted one egg yolk and reduced the sugar to 3/4 c. white sugar and 3/4 c brown sugar.  I also left out the pecans because we didn't have any.  Then instead of tons of frosting I made a cream cheese icing.  I used 3 oz of cream cheese, a couple tablespoons of softened butter, and then just added powdered sugar and milk until it was a good consistency.  Overall I think I saved myself about 228 calories and 15 grams of fat per serving!  I made one loaf and about 9 cupcakes that Dan took to work and he came home with rave reviews.... I don't think anyone missed the extra oil!

Then for dinner I wanted to try to use a decent amount of spinach and we had some portobello mushrooms that were getting old so I decided on..... whole wheat pasta with spinach pesto and chickpeas, topped with roasted portobello mushrooms.

The spinach pesto is pretty easy and I used chickpeas since we didn't have tomatoes.   

Then for the mushrooms I just sprayed a pan with cooking spray and topped the mushrooms with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and cooked for about 20 minutes at 400 degrees.  I topped the pasta with the mushrooms and sprinkled some cheese on top!  Yum!