How do you find inspiration in the uninspiring? Now, don't get me wrong. This recipe was good...a decent, easy weeknight dinner. But, it didn't leave me feeling
inspired exactly. So, after too many days of procrastinating, I decided to get down to the basics. What do I love about this recipe? Well, I love that it's easy. I love that it's pasta. I love that it gave me a second excuse in a week to use my food processor. But most of all I love that it uses artichoke hearts. I think artichoke hearts are great. The entire artichoke with its spiny outside has always eluded me somehow, as I think I've mostly been scared off by the proper way to consume it. Artichoke hearts, on the other hand, come in convenient jars or cans or frozen packages, sometimes with a lovely, wonderful-tasting olive oil-mixture to boot. That's my kind of artichoke. So, I'd have to say that the very appeal of this recipe,
in fact, the thing that drew me to it in the first place, was the artichokes. Now, once you puree the artichokes with all the other ingredients, you would barely know that an artichoke heart had found its way into the sauce. So, the mixture ends up working for artichoke fans and artichoke avoiders alike.
If you need an easy, quick dinner, give this one a try. Don't expect to have your socks knocked off. But, don't expect utter disappointment either. This is one of those recipes that is what it is...a good, everyday dinner that your family will probably like but may not remember a few weeks or months from now.
*As a side note, I spent about twenty minutes in the pasta aisle of Stop & Shop with an increasingly-antsy one-year-old attempting to find wagon-wheel pasta. It's a good thing that my little one found the chunk of Parmesan cheese (that we were also buying for this recipe) rather amusing, as it could have gotten rather ugly otherwise. I perused every brand about five times with no luck save for a miniature version made by Barilla. I decided against these mini wheels, because I thought they seemed rather puny for an adult dinner. But, it made me wonder, do full-size wagon wheel pasta still exist? They seem far too fun to have become extinct from the pasta world.
I know you won't ever give up on artichokes!! We love them. And, by the way, I think this pesto pasta is very tasty.:-) As for the wagon-wheel shapes ... go figure!! Things come and go, but, I'm with you!! Who would ever think the pasta world would even dream of tossing out the wheels!! Now, really!! They go back to pioneer days!! Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls, speak up!
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