Sunday, November 2, 2014

Veggies Galore in my Alfredo!!!













Alfredo Sauce with
Veggies & Chicken!



Nothing offsets healthy vegetables like coating them in rich, creamy, delicious Alfredo sauce! But it's the thought that counts.









So I'm sitting at home one night trying to figure out what I want to do for dinner. I'm opening and closing the fridge, scouring the pantry, even contemplating just ordering some pizza. Then I take a little closer of a look at the ingredients I have. I had gone to the store a few days prior and bought a ton of veggies. Now I'm notorious for buying veggies with the intention of being good and using them to make something healthy and delicious. Yeah...a lot of the times they sit there and go moldy while I stuff my face with cheeseburgers. So I thought this time I would actually use them and why not try to use them all at once?

Of course they're all green veggies, because I like green. No, I think those were just the ones on sale and I typically always have a couple green peppers and some green onion in my fridge anyways. Now that I had my veggies and was determined to use them, I had to figure out what the hell I was going to make. Then I saw the butter, Parmesan cheese, and heavy cream. There wasn't any other choice, I had to make Alfredo sauce. I had some chicken too do that I wouldn't be without my meat of some sort. Now that's when I got to work.


Check out one of my earlier posts to see how to make the Alfredo Sauce. Now you can do the chicken the way I did in that recipe or you can do what I simply did this time, dice it up and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a little Cayenne for some kick. Cook it in a little bit of oil and once it's no longer pink remove it and set aside.

Now for the veggies this is what I used...

A decent sized head of Broccoli
2 Medium Green Peppers
4-5 Green Onions
2 large Garlic cloves (crushed/minced)

Saute the veggies in a little bit of Olive Oil. Now I have several kinds of infused Olive Oils now, so making this again I'd probably use the basil or fennel ones. If I'm feeling spicy I'll use my spicy pepper oil. Best part of the Oktoberfest I went to in Phoenix this year was ironically finding a place that has authentic Italian Olive Oils in fused with amazing flavors. Oh my god they are so good. I highly recommend them.





Start off with sauteing the garlic and green onion in about a tablespoon of oil. Then add in the Broccoli and Peppers, if you want to use other veggies (mushrooms, red peppers, carrots) go for it. This is just what I had in my fridge that day. After the veggies are tender, but not mushy remove them from the pan and set aside with the chicken.









Now while you're doing all this you can get the Alfredo Sauce going, if you're good enough to multi-task, it's not easy sometimes. Alfredo's pretty simple though. After you have the Alfredo simmering at the right temperature and consistency add in the veggies and the chicken! Make sure everything gets a gorgeous coating of that delicious sauce.






Now you can mix the noodles right into the sauce if you'd like or you can just pour the sauce over the noodles. I'd recommend starting the noodles...well starting to get the water going when you add in the cheeses to the Alfredo sauce, so you can put the noodles in the boiling water when you add the veggies and chicken to the sauce and once the noodles are done the sauce with the veggies/chicken is all nice and evenly warm, flavors are coming together and the timing is perfect.






Just like my Alfredo Sauce, I will recommend making enough of this to share and please don't try to eat it all, it is after all pretty unhealthy. We tried our best with the amount of veggies, but let's face it something covered in gooey, cheesy, delicious Alfredo Sauce just isn't going to be at the top of the healthy food chain. Either way, please enjoy it as much as you like!

I really like the way the broccoli absorbs the sauce. And I will say that when I make my regular Alfredo Sauce when you go to re-heat it, the sauce separates a bit since there's a lot of fat and stuff. It didn't do that so much with this one. The veggies really kept everything together. So it was great for lunches the next few days!!






Couple more pictures and we're good to go! Hope you enjoy this one like the others! As always, questions and comments are welcomed! I'm trying my best to get back into the swing of things and get more of my posts going more frequently. It has been a rough couple of months though.








Thanks again for stopping by!
'Til Next Time!!