maryrambin:

—By Nutritionista

The basis of my cooking philosophy is that it doesn’t have to be hard, involve lots of complicated ingredients, or be time-consuming to be absolutely delicious and nutritious (and make use of whole-food ingredients!). To that end, here’s a recipe that only requires five ingredients (excluding staples like salt, pepper, olive oil, etc.), takes less than 30 minutes to prepare (yes, I timed it) and offers tons of nutrition.

You’ll need (serves 2-4):

• 4 servings of quick-cooking polenta
  
• 2-3 links chicken sausage (any flavor will do, but spicy Italian would be perfect. I like TJ’s brand because they use minimal processing and hormone-free meat.)
• 2-3 cups baby spinach
• colored bell pepper (yellow, red, or orange)
• medium onion (I used one small onion and two shallots because it was what I had on hand)
• tsp olive oil
• salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and parmesan to taste

Preparation:

• Chop onion and pepper into bite-sized pieces.
• Cut sausage into bite-sized pieces.
• Start preparing polenta according to directions.
• Saute onion and pepper for about 5 minutes with salt and pepper to taste.

• Add sausage to onion and pepper mixture, and cook for another 3-5 minutes.
• Add spinach and cook until wilted. Before wilting:

• Serve veggie and sausage mixture over a portion of polenta.
• Season with more salt and pepper, crushed red pepper, and parmesan if desired.

Colorful, filling, and tasty. For a more saucey dish (literally), add marinara sauce to the veggie mixture.