Easy 7 Ingredient Caprese Pesto Pasta Salad

Growing up, my mom would make the fam and I a DELICIOUS cold pasta salad with veggies during the summertime.

I would always eat 1 – OK let’s be honest, prolly ~3 – too many servings of pasta. Adding veggies to the pasta was a great hack to dilute the carbs in the dish, but my fork always poked towards the pasta bites instead of the veggies.

Due to my uncontrollable “fork”, I made an effort to convince my mom to swap the regular pasta for whole wheat pasta so there would be more fiber.

Now that I’m an intern at F-Factor, I can mentally calculate the amount of “net carbs” I was likely eating and the bread equivalence. It makes me CRINGE…

( I can equivalate any and every food to slices of Wonder bread. It is a blessing and a curse. )

The USDA says that a serving size of pasta is 1/2 cup of cooked pasta. That’s equal to about 1 and 1/3 slices of Wonder bread. Let’s be realistic, who TF only eats 1/2 cup of cooked pasta?!! There was definitely more than 1/2 cup of Terri Gorski’s famous cold pasta salad of my plate.

Let’s just say for shits & gig’s that I had two cups of pasta. If you look at a measuring cup, it doesn’t seem that unrealistic to have two cups of pasta.

That bumps up my “Wonder bread” consumption from 1 and 1/3 slices to 5 and 1/3 slices.

UM YEAH NO THX!

I don’t want to have nearly 5 and a half slices of bread for dinner! At that point, I might as well just have 1/3 of a piece of bread as an appetizer and 2 sandwiches with a side of 1 open faced sandwich for dinner…

Once your a F-Factor intern, you see things in slices of bread. I like to call it my “Wonder bread glasses”. I don’t mean to say that carbs are the devil, but here’s the thing with white pasta; there is not nutritional value.. There’s no bang for my carby buck. Just plain, white pasta.

A few months ago, I found a pasta that has more protein, less net carbs, and that taste amazing.

Pasta addicted ladies & gentleman, carb loving boys & girls, meet your new BFF – Banza pasta.

Banza pasta is WHOLE WHEAT PASTA 2.0.

DON’T WORRY MOTHER, I won’t force ya to swap the pasta in your pasta salad another time. I whipped up a recipe on my own!

I’ll be heading back home to Chicago soon and thought that I should give my mom a break from making dinner for the family. Every mom deserves a little break from the kitchen, ya know?

I came up with a similar, but new recipe with an AHTK twist. This recipe is packed with protein and fiber AND BEFORE YOU ASK, YES! – there are fewer slices of Wonder bread within these noodz.

Banza has nearly double the protein, over 4x the fiber, and almost half the net carbs.

Recipe:

1 cup dried Banza

1 heaping T sun dried tomato

1 ounce part skim mozzarella

3 large basil leaves

1.5 T pesto

1 tsp lemon juice

cracked pepper

OPTIONAL : red chili flake

Directions:

Bring water to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and add Banza pasta. Pour the pesto and lemon juice over the cooked Banza and toss until the pasta is evenly coated with pesto and lemon juice. Add sun dried tomato and mozzarella. Top with cracked pepper, & red chili flake.

Banza pasta only has THREE ingredients: chickpeas, tapioca pea protein, xanthan gum. It is gluten free, has a low Glycemic Index, is non-GMO, and vegan.

MIC. DROP. !!

By making this swap, you eat nearly two less slices of bread… not too shabby amiright?

I hope you all enjoy you low net carb pasta as much as I do!

xx hails

You can buy Banza pasta HERE !