There's Something About Pasta

Heather and I love pasta. I think we could honestly live off of it. Although, if that's really all we ate, we might not live very long! We can't deny that we love our carbs, so it's probably best that we stick with a wide range of food choices. When it comes to pasta, there are so many kinds! For your amusement, I've come up with a list of qualities that make pasta unique and just plain fantastic:

1. Noodles come in all different sizes. For example, spaghetti is long and limber and can wrap around your fork with ease.

2. There is no limit to what you can put on pasta: meat, artichokes, chicken, tofu, vegetables, butter, spaghetti sauce, pesto....you name it.

3. Noodles come in a range of shapes. Like bowties, and tubes. This week's recipe specified using wagon wheel shaped pasta. How fun is that!? The only problem....the wheels can be a bit distracting if you're a kid (or Mandi) who likes to play with food. "Ooo look, I made a wagon. Ooo oo, now I'm eating a bike!"

4. Don't forget tricolor pasta. An artists dream....colorful food!

5. Pasta isn't just made out of one ingredient. There's wheat pasta, buckwheat pasta, rice pasta...and who knows what else! Pasta is just THAT amazing.

6. And then, there's some of the unique names for pasta: Udon, Capellini, Vermicelli (this one sounds a little too much like vermon, for me to actually trust it), Zitoni (a wider version of ziti?). It's just fun trying to pronounce some of the names!

Now, if you didn't like pasta before, and still don't, then you should at least appreciate its diversity. It takes on a multitude of shapes, sizes, colors, and names. Just like people!

Go carbs!

I heart artichoke hearts

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.

The Recipe: Artichoke Pesto

from Giada De Laurentiis

1 pound wagon wheels pasta (recommended: Barilla)
1 (8-ounce) pack of frozen artichoke hearts, thawed
1 cup fresh parsley leaves, packed down
1/2 cup chopped toasted walnuts
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Add the pasta and cook until tender but still firm to the bite, stirring occasionally, about 8 to 10 minutes. Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Meanwhile, in a food processor combine the artichokes, parsley, walnuts, lemon zest and juice, garlic, salt, and pepper. Run the machine to finely chop all the ingredients, stopping the machine a few times to scrape down the sides. Then, with the machine running, drizzle in olive oil. Transfer the artichoke mixture into a large serving bowl. Stir in the cheese. Add the warm pasta and toss to combine. If needed, add the reserved pasta water 1/4 cup at a time to moisten the pasta and create a sauce-like consistency. Serve.