This is my first post from my iPhone, so I'm going to be pretty brief. It's basically a test to see how this turns out! Tonight, Zach and I weren't hungry for anything. We went to the store looking for healthy dinner options, but were at a loss for what to make. It was getting pretty late, so I decided pasta would be a great idea. We don't eat it often, and I often crave the type of spaghetti my mom (and probably yours!) made: the kid-pleaser jar of store-bought sauce with ground beef thrown in. So that's what I did, with a few healthy improvements: ground turkey instead of beef for protein, plus red peppers, mushrooms and onions for flavor and nutrition. Kinda lazy. Deliciously lazy.

Sauces come in really healthy options now; be sure to get one without any added sugar.  Some national brands can have a lot, so read those labels!  In addition, whole wheat pasta can be great to help cut down on the carbs, but as I don't eat a lot of pasta, I'm pretty okay with plain old noodles.  This pasta was made of spelt, which does not differ in taste from normal wheat pasta, but it is apparently a somewhat different entity.  I've also used brown rice pasta before with excellent results.

Pasta, yum!

Tonight's dinner is something I made up a long time ago, when Zach and I first went vegetarian in college.  This was, of course, long before I started writing this blog.  Its a quiet, unassuming casserole dish that you can't really mess up, and is perfect to take along with you or to make ahead of time and pop into the oven.  Its cheap, and you don't need a lot of stuff to make it.

2 cups of dry pasta.  Any shape works fine, but spaghetti probably wouldn't be very good in this.
1 can of beans (I used garbanzo.  Cannelini beans would also be a good choice.  You could probably use cooked chicken, also.)
1 jumbo log of goat cheese, crumbled up (mine was 11 oz, I only used about 5)
1 jar of pasta sauce.  If you make your own, use it.  I use Newman's.
feta cheese crumbles
vegetable of your choice.  Tomatoes go nicely, I've put onions in before but its a good idea to sautee them a bit first.  Spinach might also.

Cook the 2 cups of dry pasta and drain it.  Chop the vegetables and add them to a medium-sized casserole dish.  Add the beans, pasta, sauce (to your taste) and  goat cheese.  Mix together.  The sauce should get a little creamy.  Top with the feta.

At this point you can put this in the fridge to bake later or pop it in an oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, just long enough for everything to melt together and get really hot.  Serve.

Start to finish this might take 40 minutes.  Made ahead of time, dinner is ready almost before you are!

Note: I said you can't really mess this up, but you can. Tonight I used sun dried tomatoes.  They made everything really salty, so I'd save them for another time, since sauce from a jar is probably already salty enough.  Normally this is damn tasty.

What do to with leftover goat cheese?  I think its fabulous on crackers!

Among other things I'm also an Italian grandma.

My mom got me a noodle machine for Christmas this year, in addition to some mini cupcake pans. So now I have a noodle machine. And If I may say so myself, home made noodles trump store bought any day. Even the ones you buy in the frozen foods section.

You don't, however, need a noodle machine. Just a rolling pin, a sharp knife, and the desire to die happy:

Pasta (this is not my recipe, but all recipes on the internet and in books generally point to this recipe. Plus it is easily doubled.) Serves 2ish sort-of hungry but not starving people.
-1 cup all purpose flour (recipes suggest semolina, but if both whole foods and giant eagle didn't have it, good luck and try the strip district maybe?)
-1 egg, well beaten
-1/2 tsp salt (my mother is now warning of the dangers of regular table salt, so you might want to use sea or kosher)
-a small amount of water as needed

1. Combine flour and salt.
2. Make a well and add the egg. Gradually incorporate the flour. Or if you're like me, and this fails every time, just mix them until a dough forms.
3. You want the dough to stick together and be solid, but kind of dry. In my experience, if its too wet, it won't go through my machine correctly. So if after you mix, you still have a powdery mess, add water. If you have a ball of dough, don't.
4. Let it sit there. For like 20 minutes.
5. Cut into about 4 sections. If you don't have a machine, roll each separately, then cut into noodles. A pizza cutter would work well here if you have one.
6. Bring about 2 quarts of water to a rolling boil. Home made noodles take 3-4 minutes to cook, much less time than store bought.



So you want a sauce to go with this? This one worked very well:

Brood Witch Sauce (with sun-dried tomatoes)

6 cups of chopped tomatoes (about 5-6 large ones)
1/2 onion, chopped
5-6 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped.
1 clove of garlic, smooshed.
rosemary
oregano
pepper
salt(if the sun-dried tomatoes weren't already salty enough)
olive oil

Combine ingredients in a large pot. Cook on medium to low heat until it looks like sauce. Stir often, try not to burn it. Stir in no more than 1/4 cup (but probably much less) olive oil at the end. I added a few pinches of baking soda to even out the acidity.