Flexible! Nutrition on the Walnut & Artichoke Pesto

So, each week when I post the menu I encourage you to be flexible with yourself in meal preparation - switch the days as needed to ensure that this really easy, and stress reducing method of shopping works for you.  Well, swordfish and the works was not gonna work for me - I had to be to brownies by no later than 5:30... BUT, the pasta from Friday did work for us tonight... and it was so dang good I failed to take a picture of it.  SO yummy.  I'll get you some nutritional...

If you made this as I instructed, you enjoyed about 425 calories tonight, about 28 grams of fat, 35 carbs, and 13 g. of protien.  Of course, the mystery in this pesto is how much olive oil.  I did not measure, I followed the "slowly stream olive oil in until desired paste consistency" type of direction.  IF by chance I cut the olive oil by half, which is quite feasible, then the nutrional drops to under 350 calories, the carbs and protein stay the same, but that fat drops to 19 grams.  The entire difference being, of course, fat from the olive oil.

Olive Oil IS SO good for your diet ... in moderation.  This is a fabulous meal... there are ways to really lighten it up.  Everything in this meal could be tweaked a bit to make it heathier!  I could have used less parmesan cheese - less olive oil, and really, quite honestly, there is ALOT of pesto on the pasta at my house!  I made the amount of pesto directed, and only served two people, and i KNOW I have at least 1/2 of the pesto left - Joe and I loved it, but if nutrition were our number one concern, we'd have cut back on the pesto by half again...and still enjoyed a wonderful flavor.

Now, I have not mentioned at all that there is fat in the walnuts, which there certainly is, nor have I suggested cutting back on them... don't... they are really good for you, and provide some nutrients that you just don't get in good amounts everyday!  Barbara, who loves to research this type of stuff, can blog on the benefits of walnuts, I'll just tell you that in your 1/4 of a 1/3 of a cup you only got 64 calories of course almost entirely fat calories, but the benes most likely outweigh the costs!!!