Thursday, April 9, 2009

fresh and easy

Both my day and my dinner were fresh and easy! My boss told me to leave work early and go out and enjoy our beautiful day, which I happily did. I took my lovely walk home through the Boston Common and stopped and sat by the pond and ate my afternoon snack. And then I just lounged and sunbathed (or “sunbabed”, as my mom always says now because apparently that’s what I called it as a child) and soaked up the springtime goodness. It was seriously nice.

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Dinner was also seriously nice! Calling this Italian is a bit of a stretch, but at least the ideas are there- fresh ingredients, vibrant flavors, and PASTA! Yay for pasta. This was easy and quick. I put on the pasta water to boil and chopped up mushrooms and spinach. I sauteed the shrooms in 1/2 tsp of olive oil, salting them so they’d brown up all nice, then added the spinach and sauteed those around, then added 1/2 cup chickpeas for some bulk, and some crushed red pepper flakes for some zing. When the pasta- I used 2 ounces of penne- was almost finished cooking (this timed out ridiculously well, it was basically the same time the spinach had wilted down and everything was nice and irresistible smelling) I threw that in the pan with the veggies and a bit of pasta water (I accomplished this by the simple virtue of not having a strainer, so I just scooped out the pasta and thus water too with a bit spoon). Then I threw in 2 tbsp or so of crushed tomatoes and 1 tbsp and a bit of tapenade. Stirred them around until they formed a nice sort of sauce.

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So tasty! Vibrant, refreshing, comforting, delicious, and healthy! This is more of the low carb pasta for diabetics I got for free at work. The thing that I do like about it is the added fiber, so it has a bit more staying power (and obviously I bulked it up with the fibery veggies and the proteiny beans).

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