As a busy college student, Annie's Mac n Cheese is a godsend. There's something about toiling over research papers and planning programming for a student-run radio station and a public relations student group that makes me crave pasta. However, I want to stay as healthy as possible, of course. That's where Annie's comes in. It's organic, nutritious and delicious. 

However, part of healthy eating is variety. You can eat fruit your whole life, however you need some form of protein. You can eat PB&J your whole life, but you need vitamins and minerals. That's why I leverage the easy-to-make Annies and mix it with beans, tomatoes, fresh veggies, and protein to stretch one box into at least two meals.

Today I'll show you how I spice up the organic shells & real aged cheddar.

Chicken, spinach, and pasta are some of my favorite things to eat. The other day, I actually had spanakopita for breakfast, a broth bowl with spinach in it for lunch, and spinach and beans topped with scallops for dinner. I may actually turn into spinach.

I combined this pasta with spinach and ground chicken. In a pan, I sauteed the ground chicken with some Mrs. Dash until it browned. I simultaneously had water boiling. When the water came to a boil, I added the pasta. Once the chicken was browned, I added a handful of spinach in the pan and let it wilt. By that time, the pasta was cooked so I combined the cheese mix, milk, and butter as according to the package. After it sit and absorbed, I added the chicken and spinach. Voila!

This will make enough for two meals: one for now, one for later.

Here, I added tomatoes and pinto beans into the Organic Shells & White Cheddar mix.

One of my favorite things to do is to make recipes "Nikki-fied", which usually means, add a healthier kick to it. I do this all the time. It may be me being stubborn and a perfectionist, it may be me being a health nut, it may be me wanting a reason to make a new blog post, the world may ever know. However, I do know that I love butternut squash and pasta.

On Christmas Eve, my family likes to make Italian-style food. Perhaps it's because the food we eat on Christmas day is so Americanized. Perhaps it's because pasta food is such a comfort food for a cold December night. Either way, it's a tradition I don't mind. I found this recipe on Pinterest, and it instantly stuck out to me. Pasta, gorgonzola, bacon, butternut squash, pasta... it's all heavenly to me.

The first step was to make the sauce. The sauce is a rich butternut squash sauce. The first step is to roast the butternut squash with garlic.

When it was almost done, I started sizzling the pasta toppings in a sautee pan. I replaced bacon with turkey bacon, and added sun dried tomatoes.

After the squash and garlic were tender, I took it out. I don't love too much garlic, so I minced it after roasting. Then, I added both to a food processor. 

In a bowl, I whisked light cream instead of heavy cream, nonfat greek yogurt, diced tomatoes, 3/4 cup gorgonzola cheese, and low sodium chicken stock.

 

I got the squash processing away while adding my dairy mixture in through the tube.

Then, according to the recipe, I cooked the pasta according to bag instructions. My replacement here was organic linguine for regular linguine. The instructions called the save some pasta water to loosen up the sauce. However, since I used nonfat greek yogurt and my diced tomatoes were more watery, I didn't need to. 

I combined the pasta, sauce, and topping, and boom!

Ingredients: