Healthy Recipe: Spinach, pear and feta cheese pasta salad

Hello :)

Today I'm here with our very healthy recipe review that we actually managed to not mess up, we're clearly masterchefs in the making. Anyway as I've mentioned before I'm in the middle of reading this amazing book called "Health Defence" by Dr Paul Clayton and along with the book goes a small cookbook.  I've been eager to try out some of the recipes ever since I got my hands on it, so at last me and Kai made one, here are our thoughts.

Firstly, I'll just talk about the recipe itself, in case someone else wishes to try it out. The ingrediences are: 450 g/1 lb pasta, cooked and cooled, 375 g/ 12 oz baby spinach leaves, 2 ripe pears, skin on and sliced, 2 yellow pepers, half a cucumber, 120 g / 4,5 oz feta cheese, 2 tbsp fresh parsely, chopped. Dressing: 100 ml extra virgin olive oil, 30 ml balsamic vinegar, 1 tbsp honey, low sodium salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The actual cooking is very easy, that's probably why even we didn't mess it up, we had to cook the pasta, left it to cool, chopped all of the other ingrediences up and mixed them together, mixed together the dressing as well and ready it was, took about an hour or so, although the book said it would be 30 minutes, so we clearly took our time.. The amounts given are supposed to feed four people, we halved all of those portions so that it would be enough for two and not too much. However, for us that was still about 4 portions, maybe even more, but that might be, because we're two rather tiny girls who don't eat as much as most people.

Now getting into the health portion of the blog post, this particular combination of foods has a lot of health benefits, I'll go over them one by one. Lets start with pasta, a lot of people categorise pasta as something unhealthy, however it is actually a healthy low fat source for protein and complex carbohydrates, it also doesn't have a high glycemic idex. You can also choose a type of pasta that you like more or find healthier, such as wholegrain pasta, pasta made out of lentils or hummus, the options are endless, so you can really play around with it. Spinach contains Vitamin K, lutein, beta carotene, Vitamin C and potassium which can help lower blood pressure. It's also one of my favourite green leaf vegetables and it tastes good. Yellow peppers are another great source of Vitamin C, which is an anti-oxidant. I'm not a huge fan of this particular vegetable, but I feel like yellow peppers have a milder flavour than for example freen or red, so that's another bonus for me. Pears are a great source of fiber, it also contains potassium and again Vitamin C. It's also important to keep the skin of the pear since it contains immuno-stimulants. 

As for the taste of the salad and dressing together, I must say I was pleasantly surprised, it was very good and we enjoyed it, most likely would do it again, but probably less at a time, since it lasted quite a few meals for us. It doesn't taste too healthy, it wasn't too dry and the sweetness of the pear went together with the other flavours very well. The salad stays fresh in the fridge for about 2 days, wouldn't stretch it past that.

That's all for this little review, hope you liked it and we'll definitely be trying out some other healthy recipes soon again.

Kaiela :)