Healthy Dinner Kids Want to Eat

• What: Easy Alfredo Sauce Recipe
• When: 12 months and up
• Why: Simple, fast, delicious
• Where: Amazon

One thing all three of my kids can agree on: they like pasta. While finding a meal option everyone will eat proves challenging, we end up eating a lot of pasta dishes. My kids particularly love Alfredo sauce, also known as white sauce in our house.

I got tired of paying lots of money for small jars of sauce that didn’t feed our family of five. I also didn’t love the high fat and low nutritional content of most store bought varieties. Once I went looking, I found a great recipe on 40aprons.com that uses cottage cheese to provide a lower fat, higher protein alternative. Best of all, my kids prefer it to the jars and packets and ask for it regularly.

Simple ingredients turn into a tasty sauce.

You’ll need low fat cottage cheese, grated parmesan cheese, skim milk, cornstarch, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, and basil. Those nine simple ingredients make a flavorful yet popular sauce to top any sort of pasta, which takes less time than going to the store. In only 15 minutes, you can make a batch for yourself.

• 1 cup skim milk
• ½ cup lowfat cottage cheese
• 1 tbs cornstarch
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp pepper
• ¼ tsp garlic powder
• ½ cup grated Parmesan or Romano
• Dried basil to taste
• Dried oregano to taste

Add all the ingredients and blend until smooth. Pour mixture into a small saucepan. Cook over medium low heat until heated throughout and smooth. Let cook on low heat for five minutes, stirring occasionally. Let the finished sauce sit for a few minutes, with or without the pasta added, to thicken. This recipe makes enough sauce about half a bag or box of pasta. If you want to use fewer dishes, blend all the ingredients with an immersion blender in the pot. 

I use an immersion blender to mix the ingredients.

I like to add broccoli, chicken, or both, but it works well with just about anything. I usually make a double batch for our family of five with three kids under ten. It isn’t unusual for us to eat the entire bigger batch, though we sometimes have a bit remaining. We even mix leftover bits of Alfredo sauce with tomato sauce to make a pink sauce as well.