New Recipe: Greek Penne Pasta

This recipe sounded delicious to me when I came across it, and it turned out that it was. Also, I've reached the point with cooking where I can make a few modifications without worrying that I'm going to ruin the whole thing. The modifications I made this time turned out to be terrific. However, the WW points that I'm showing here are for the original recipe, and do not include my modifications (which I'm sure made the whole thing less healthy).

Greek Penne Pasta: Makes 4 servings; 10 WW points per serving

Ingredients

• 12 oz uncooked penne
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2/3 oz pine nuts, about 2 tbsp [I used more than this]
• 1 1/2 tsp minced garlic
• 10 oz chopped frozen spinach, thawed
• 1 pound tomatoes, plum [I used on-the-vine tomatoes instead of plum]
• 4 oz feta cheese, crumbled [I used feta, but regular goat cheese would be delicious too]
• 6 medium olives, black, pitted and chopped [I just used a small can, drained, of sliced black olives]
• [I also used about 8 oz of boneless, skinless chicken breast]

Instructions

1. Cook pasta according to package directions (without butter or oil), drain and set aside. If necessary, cover to keep warm.
2. Coat a large skillet with cooking spray. Add olive oil and heat over medium-high heat until oil sizzles. Add pine nuts and garlic. Cook and stir until pine nuts are golden brown, about 3 minutes. [I added the chicken with the pine nutes and sauteed until nearly cooked through before moving to the next step.]
3. Stir in spinach and tomatoes and cook until heated through, stirring occasionally, about 3 minutes. [I also added the olives and some feta at this point instead of sprinkling them on at the end. This turned out to be a great idea--the sauce had a slight olive-y taste to it, which was great, and the feta was very nicely incorporated.]
4. Add spinach mixture to pasta and toss until combined. Serve pasta sprinkled with feta cheese and black olives. [Despite having added some feta earlier, we also sprinkled some on our plates. It was great.] Yields about 1 1/2 cups per serving.

The verdict: YUM. The only annoying thing about this recipe was that I had a bunch of tiny tomatoes that all needed to be prepped. Everything else was super easy and quick, and it came out delicious. The chicken was a great way to up the lean protein in the dish, but it would be excellent vegetarian style, too. This was so good, we were totally fighting over the leftovers.