Pasta Night! Healthified Pesto Pasta

Enjoy an easy and guilt free Italian dinner, with this pesto pasta recipe (red wine and Andrea Bocelli are recommended with the meal).

The key to making this healthy is the substitution of 99% fat free cream of mushroom soup (or cream of celery) in place of fatty cream or butter.  Only a small amount of olive oil mixed into the pesto sauce mix (for the amount of pasta it covers) keeps the calories down, too.

It might be just as tasty to mix two pesto sauce packets into the same amount of olive oil, with two condensed soups (or maybe just one soup and a 1/3 cup milk).

Also see this recipe for pesto spaghetti squash, from an earlier post of mine.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups cooked pasta of choice
• Grape tomatoes (halved)
• 1 can artichoke hearts
• 1/3 cup olive oil
• 1 can condensed 99% fat free cream of mushroom soup
• 1 packet (or 2) pesto sauce mix
• ground black pepper
• Fresh basil
• clove of fresh garlic
• Parmesan cheese for sprinkling (tasty without it though)

Directions:

1. Cook the pasta according to box directions, drain and set aside
2. Make the pesto sauce mix according to packet directions and stir the soup in while at a simmer, adding a couple of fresh chopped basil leaves and stirring often for a couple of minutes; remove from heat.
3. In a large skillet, sauté the chopped garlic clove
4. Pour the pesto mix into the skillet
5. Add the pasta and artichoke hears- mix it all together
6. Toss in the tomatoes
7. Sprinkle with black pepper
8. Add the remaining chopped fresh basil leaves over the individual servings

Here is a Campbell’s recipe to work from.