The Perpetual Feast

I have been growing basil and cilantro in pots on a high deck where the deer can’t reach them. Normally, they treat my gardening efforts as a salad bar, but without their predations my herbs have grown heartily. The Thai Basil was so beautiful that I’m not eating it, just growing it ornamentally.

Of course, now I’m drowning in basil – until I came across this recipe from Coconut and Lime. She created it to use up leftover spaghetti and an abundance of cherry tomatoes. I didn’t have leftover spaghetti, but I did have three opened bags of No-Yolks fine noodles with small amounts of noodles that could be combined (I really should check the pasta shelf before I open new bags). I also had overbought grape tomatoes, so I needed to use them before they turned into mush.

Tomato Basil Noodle Bake

2 eggs
1 1/2 cups egg substitute
4 strips of turkey bacon, cooked and chopped
3 1/2 cups (not packed) cooked fine no yolk noodles
1 cup of grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup of fresh basil, chopped
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 425 F, Spray an 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray. In a medium bowl, stir together eggs, egg substitute, bacon, tomatoes, basil, parmesan cheese, and pepper. Add noodles and mix ingredients so that tomatoes and basil are distributed throughout the mixture. Pour into prepared pan. Bake for 30-40 minutes. Serve hot. Cut into 4 or six servings, depending on what you are have with it to round out the meal. 6 servings is about 4.5 grams of fat/serving; 4 servings is about 6.75 grams of fat/serving

Variation: You could easily leave out the bacon, and it would make a nice vegetarian dish. This would reduce the fat gram count by about 1 gram/serving.

I’m also going to try this with low-fat Swiss cheese one day soon. The basil is still growing vigorously.

The original recipe described this as a breakfast dish, but to me it was more lunch or dinner-like. I took the smaller serving for lunch, heating it in the office microwave for about a minute.

But it really shined as a dinner dish with spaghetti sauce over it. This was a peppery sauce with virtually no fat in it, but I think any red sauce would taste great, as long as you accounted for the fat grams in the sauce in your serving..

Hint: I freeze leftover spaghetti sauce in 1 cup containers so I have small amounts when I need them.