So ... it's just possible I've gone a little overboard with my return to healthy cooking. I have ended up at the end of a few weeks with unused ingredients. I've also {... ahem...} not always gotten recipes just the way I imagined them.
So, what's a girl to do? Tonight I made pasta sauce!
Monday night I had roasted zucchini, yellow squash, an onion, and a red pepper. The yellow squash cooked much faster than the other items. It tasted great, but it was mushy - just not a fun texture. Also, after a couple meals, we were sort of tired of eating them in the same form.
There were some other random & sundry items hanging out in the fridge. As you can see above: 1/2 a container of grape tomatoes, ~2/3 a block of reduced fat feta, and maybe 2 TBSP Greek olive hummus.
I fired up a pot of water to boil & added about 1/2 a pound whole wheat rotini.
Meanwhile, I tossed everything else into my trusty food processor and let'er rip! I ended up adding a cup or so of plain marinara sauce (which was sitting half-full in the fridge). This just helped to smooth everything out.
After I drained the cooked pasta, I warmed the "sauce" through in the same pot, then I tossed it all together.
I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to call this a recipe. It's more of concept or method. But it is a great one to add to your arsenal.
It hits a couple highlights:
1. Frugality -- nothing frustrates me more than tossing out even half a container of grape tomatoes!
2. Creative use of veggies -- I really did not decide to do this meal to "hide" veggies and "trick" my daughter into eating them. My preference is to expose her to a variety of vegetables with a variety of preparations, with the hope of instilling a general love of vegetables. That being said, she chowed this down better than the whole roasted veggies!
It looks delish! I threw together pasta with a sauted onion/sausage/tomato mix today. Need some ideas for the weekend.
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