Saturday, April 14, 2012

Fun, Delicious and Tasty Veggie Recipes With Country Crock

This post is sponsored by Country Crock. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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I don't know about your household, but in ours... vegetables are a hard sell to the kids. No matter how I try and serve them... it's takes a lot of convincing to even get them to try it.


The smart folks at Country Crock just recently introduced something I think my kids are going to LOVE. The Crock Country Chronicles offers easy vegetable recipes ideas that are delicious and more importantly, kid-friendly.


If you head on over to the Crock Country Chronicles, you can download a cookbook for FREE - A Very Veggie World by Clare Crespo.




This particular cookbook offers colorful pictures and inspirational recipes to make serving those veggies a little more fun for the family. From veggie pets to lighting bolts, veggie volcanos to rocket ships, your kids will certainly get a kick out of at least giving those veggies a shot.


For my family, I opted to give the Pasta Full of Posies a try. The recipe was simple to follow and called for the following ingredients:


2 yellow and/or orange bell peppers
1 package (16 oz.) whole wheat penne (or pasta of your choice)
3 Tbsp. Country Crock® Spread
1 Tbsp. olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese 5 cherry tomatoes, halved
7 basil or baby spinach leaves 


Chop off top and bottom of peppers. Slice down the side, remove the seeds and lay pepper flat. Cut into petal shapes.

Boil pasta according to package directions; drain.



Melt Country Crock® Spread and heat olive oil on the stove over medium heat in a pan big enough to hold pasta. Cook garlic and peppers together for about 5 minutes. With tongs, remove pepper petals and set aside.



Add pasta and cheese to garlic and toss together. Put pasta in shallow serving dish. Arrange tomato halves on top and surround them with pepper petals to make “flowers.” Add a basil or baby spinach leaf to each flower.
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Thankfully, I had the majority of ingredients on hand and the directions were easy enough to follow.


First, I wanted to get the pasta started.

Then, gathered my veggies - yellow pepper and cherry tomatoes.

Began to cut my flower petal shapes from the yellow peppers.

Added my Country Crock, along with olive oil to the pan.



Saute the yellow pepper flower petals along with the garlic in the pan.

Removed the flower petals from the pan and added the cooked pasta to the pan, along with the parmesan cheese. Stirred for a minute or so.

Once combined, added to a serving dish and created my posie flowers with the yellow peppers, cherry tomatoes and baby spinach leaves.

I loved how it turned out and so did the kids... they said, "How did you do that?" I thought, YES, they LOVE it. The overall flavor of the pasta was actually more delicious than we expected it to taste. The peppers that were sautéed with Country Crock (with  70% less saturated fat, 30% fewer calories than butter and 0 trans fat) had a nice crisp, roasted flavor. The kids added a little extra parmesan to their pasta mixture and were super pleased! Ahhhh... a veggie success!

Want to learn more about Country Crock, please visit:

Are you looking for quick and simple tips and recipes to make serving veggies more fun? Download the free Clare Crespo Cookbook here for fun and whimsical recipes your family is sure to love!



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1 comment:

VickieC said...

We love Country Crock,,I cook with it a lot too