I’m always on the hunt for healthy substitutes for my favorite foods – and pasta is definitely one of those.  I wrote about Miracle Noodles in this post, and now I feel like I will not be purchasing those again, because I came across a product I love so much more called Palmini.  It just tastes so, so, SO much better.

I found the Palmini product through an instagram account called Healthy with Nedi (and I discovered that account through following the F Factor account!)   And then soon after seeing Nedi post about the product, I saw their product featured on Shark Tank  (I love Shark Tank, too! Always trying to find shows for my husband and I to watch together.)

I have been making changes to eat more fiber and less NET carbs and this is a great meal option for that.

If you like hearts of palm, you will LOVE this pasta. The only ingredients are water, salt, hearts of palm, and citric acid. What’s not to like about that?!

So, what the heck is it?!  Here is a run down of it :

• Palmini is a pasta substitute made 100% out of a natural plant known as Hearts of Palm. When this plant is cut and cooked in the proper way, it’s resemblance to regular pasta is remarkable. Not only does it look like pasta, but it can also taste like pasta!

• Over 90% of Palmini is water. Additionally, Palmini is a vegetable and just as many other vegetables, Palmini has a very high content of fiber. The combination of water and fiber create an “Almost Free” calorie product.
• No sugar, 20 calories and 4 g of carbs per serving. Palmini is naturally Gluten Free. We have also tested our product and no gluten was detected.

The entire can is 60 calories, and because each serving has 2 g of fiber, the entire can has 6 grams of fiber and only 6 grams of Net Carbs. Win win!

The only place that I have seen this is Amazon, but Whole Foods may carry it?! You can order it in a pack of 6 cans.  It’s pricier than a box of  pasta at $4.50 per can, but when that and a side salad is your dinner, it’s still affordable to me.
the first review on amazon says that one can serves 4-6 and I think this person is absolutely insane.  Sure, one can could feed two with a big salad, but I mean….. huh? so trust me, one can feeds 2 max. 

On another note, something I like about this is that it is gluten free.  I don’t eat gluten free, but I also wasn’t consuming a ton of gluten during the week because the meals I was making were naturally gluten free.  That was until I started adding more fiber into my diet.  I am obsessed with the GG Crackers and love making GG pizzas for dinner because it takes two seconds.  BUT, they are gluten.  So when I started adding them to my salads for lunch and then having 4 of them for dinner every night, I was adding in a ton of gluten that wasn’t there before.  So I’m trying to change up my meals a bit more!
For snacks I was also doing a lot of yogurt with blueberries and Bran Buds, which I also love, but again, prior to that I wasn’t having dairy and gluten as a snack every day, so I am trying to change it up a bit more.

But I digress…..

I have now made the Palmini pasta three times and I LOVE IT.  They have a couple suggestions for  how to prepare it on the can.  You can definitely want to rinse it well, and you won’t want to eat it straight out of the can.  You can either soak it in almond milk for 30 min- 1 hour, then heat up with sauce and enjoy.  OR, you can rinse and boil it for 5-10 minutes, and then head up with sauce and enjoy.  A friend told me that the almond milk works great, and I think that probably removes almost all of the “hearts of palm” taste, but I haven’t tried that yet.  Too much time and thinking ahead for me!

I boiled it for 10 minutes, spent a minute or two heating it up with the sauce mixed in, and think it is DELICIOUS!

Definitely use a high quality sauce.  The only red sauce you’ll ever need is Rao’s.  It is heaven on earth.  These are also great mixed with a pesto sauce too!

I was too busy eating to take a picture….. I’ll work on getting a better one for next time.

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On another note, a few of my favorite summer sandals below !

// PINK + BLUE SANDALS // TORTOISE TORY BURCH MILLER, SIMIlAR // STRIPED TORY BURCH SANDALS // 

I live in sandals in the summer months.  Everything from $15 sandals up to my long lasting Tory Burch.  I linked a bunch of other favorite sandals below!  The Tory Burch’s are definitely my favorite, but the tortoise are impossible to find, so I linked a similar print that looks like tortoise when you are wearing them!