Hello!

Recently, I’ve been making some variation on a very simple pasta dish. It’s basically sauteed vegetables, an egg, and pasta. And cheese. (semi-optional.)

Ingredients

For the above, I used:

1.  A serving of thin spaghetti
2. half a zucchini
3. A stick of celery
4. Mushrooms
5. 1-2 slices of onion (About 1/4 of a small onion.)
6. garlic
7. 1-3 tsp butter (possibly more if you’re not using Non-Stick cookware.)
8. Cinnamon
9. Basil
10. Parsley
11. 1 egg

Directions

1. Start boiling water for your pasta. While waiting for the water to come to a boil:
2. Heat butter in a frying pan
3. Chop vegetables
4. When butter is heated, add onions, mushrooms, celery, and garlic. (You’ll want to wait on the zucchini, since it takes less time to cook. You could also use spinach here instead, in which case you really want to wait.)
5. When water comes to a boil, cook pasta according to package directions. Keep the vegetables sauteing while the pasta is cooking. When there’s only about five minutes left to the pasta, then add the zucchini. Sometime in here, also add cinnamon, basil, and parsley to taste.
6. When past is cooked, transfer to the frying pan with the vegetables, add the egg, and stir quickly. (The goal is to coat the hot pasta with the egg, not to have an egg/pasta scramble.)
7. When the egg is thoroughly cooked, serve. Add cheese if desired.
8. Enjoy your dinner!

The total time for me is usually about 15 minutes or so. It’s a nice, tasty, easy dinner.

Hi!

Tonight, to complement some previously prepared ground pork, I made a very nice pasta dish. (If I do say so myself.)

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

(Note: Many of these ingredients are just seasonings. It’s actually a fairly easy recipe. A bit more time-intensive than some, and I wouldn’t have time for it most of the time during the school year. But since I’m procrastinating on studying for my comprehensive exams at the end of the summer, this works out great for right now!)

1. 1 serving of Spaghetti
2. 1 Cup of Broccoli (I used fresh. Hooray for summer!)
3. 1/2 a Zucchini
4. 1-2 cups of either spinach or kale
5. 1 large clove garlic (although I’d recommend more…)
6. zest from a lemon
7. zest from a lime
8. Grated ginger
9. 1/2 lemon
10. 1/4 lime
11. 2 squirts of chili oil
12. 1 shake of cumin (more would be better, so you can taste it)
13. a pinch of red pepper flakes
14. a shake or three of salt
15. a little bit of olive oil
16. 1/3 C shredded jack cheese (optional)

Directions

1. Chop zucchini and broccoli into reasonably sized pieces. Stir in with zest, pepper flakes, 1 squirt of chili oil, juice from 1/4 lime and 1/4 lemon, and ginger. Let sit for a while.
2. Start water boiling for pasta
3. While water is boiling, in a large frying pan, heat oil, pour in marinated vegetables. Add the garlic, cumin, and salt.

   

4. When water is boiling, pour in the pasta, cook according to directions to al dente
5. After the initial stirring of the pasta, pour the kale/spinach into the veggie mix. (You don’t want to over-cook these!) Note that at this point especially, you should be using fairly low heat. I always use lower heat than I might, due to non-stick pans, but you don’t want burnt kale/spinach/leaves-of-some-sort.
6. As needed, incorporate a spoonful of the pasta-water, and the remaining 1/4 lemon. (This allows the veggies to steam as well.)

   

    

7. When pasta is ready, take the pasta out of the water and place it into the frying pan. (Note: I did not rinse my pasta this time.) Turn heat down even LOWER.

   

8. If you haven’t already done so, squeeze in the 1/4 lemon.
9. Stir / combine
10. When pasta is incorporated, put onto a plate
11. If using cheese, now’s the time to pour it on top.
12. Enjoy!

So, yeah. This was a more time-intensive, slightly more expensive recipe. But it was very tasty. (I had a serving of ground pork I’d previously cooked to go along with it.)