Monday, September 8, 2008

Spinach-Alfredo Sauce

Abby and I had friends over for lunch today, which meant another unsuspecting toddler for me to use as a taste-tester! Ha! I made this spinach-alfredo sauce over noodles for the girls and got two big toddler smiles. Each girl even asked for seconds!

Spinach-Alfredo Sauce
Total time: 20 minutes

Your child's favorite pasta
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 cup Parmesan cheese
1/3 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and pureed

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside. While pasta is boiling, make the sauce: Melt the butter in a medium-size saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and whisk together until the mixture is thick, golden, and bubbly - about 2 minutes. Whisking constantly, slowly pour in the milk. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, for 5-10 minutes, until the sauce is thick. Stir in the Parmesan cheese until melted. Stir in the spinach puree. Add a little extra milk if sauce seems too thick. Toss the pasta with the sauce and serve to happy toddlers!

This made a fair amount of sauce, so I tossed about half of the sauce in with the pasta and saved the rest in a storage container for future dinners. When my younger daughter starts solids and I have lots of baby purees around the house, I can see using this alfredo base to stir in lots of different vegetable flavors.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I tried this at lunch today. My girls thought it was "eh". I really liked it, though ;P Thanks!!

Kara said...

Sometimes half the fun for me is finishing Abby's leftovers! :-) Glad you liked it!

Anonymous said...

Well, I just made this for dinner, but added chicken (which I cooked in the crockpot and then shredded). My son hates anything veggie like, heck he doesn't like anything that has been in the same room as anything veggie like. He ate this up and asked for more. My daughter walked by as I was pureeing the spinach and said, "EWWWWWWW!" Again, she ate it up without arugment.

Mine didn't come out looking the picture. I don't think I pureed it enough, but we all liked it so the recipe goes in my aresnal. Thanks and love the new look.

Kara said...

Yay!! so glad it was a hit! :-)

Unknown said...

My daughter hasn't finished her dinner plate in MONTHS and months and months.

Tonight she ate all these noodles. then she asked for more.

{{insert shocked mama face here!}}

THANK YOU! I'll definitely be back to check out more recipes!