pasta

As I was sitting down to compose this post, I realized that the majority of my posts are about main dishes. I owe a sincere apology to the side dish, which I seldom mention except in passing. I promise that I will be better about trying to give side dishes their due and some attention of their own. After all, no meal is complete without a quality side dish or two.

It's really funny how, even many years later, if you look at how you put meals together, you can see the influence of your childhood. I grew up in a house where a meal was not complete if it did not include some form of vegetable - most often a green one. Now that I am an adult and in charge of putting meals for my family together, I see this influence - if there is not something green on the plate, the meal just does not feel complete. I guess there could be worse remnants of my childhood than the need to have veggies with dinner :-)

I have also found that just a pile of plain veggies on the plate, however, doesn't really appeal to me. I need interest and variety. Of late, we have been having brown rice with some veggie in it (broccoli, peas, mixed veggies). I owe this to my dear friend Connie, who taught me this trick - Trader Joe's (or whatever store you find it in) precooked brown rice (3 mins in the micro) and a bag of steamfresh veggies (4 or 5 mins) - pour both in the same bowl and mix with a little sea salt and butter and yum! Sometimes, I will stand in front of the fridge or pantry (or both) and look at what I have on hand and say to myself, "What can I do with this?" Often, this happens when I am faced with a bit of several things that I need to use before they go bad. Today turned out to be one of those challenge days. Not because I have things about to go off, but because I had something I am not particularly fond of...

While I was shopping today, I picked up some asparagus for my hubby. He loves asparagus, I could take it or leave it. I was planning to serve it with salt and a little lemon juice - nice and simple (hubby isn't as picky as I am) - and have enough left over for him to take to work for lunch tomorrow. But when I opened my pantry, I was greeted by a package of garlic basil linguine we got from TJ's on Sunday. The wheels of my brain started turning and I decided that this pasta would be delicious with steamed asparagus, mushrooms and a little dusting of parmesano-reggiano. The only problem was the lack of mushrooms. What I DID find in the pantry, however, was a can of peas. I thought that this might make a nice side dish that would definitely make leftover chicken and pork chops more interesting. Once I mixed it all together in the bowl, this hypothesis was proven to be correct - it was delicious! I don't really even like asparagus and I loved it. Proving yet again that pretty much ANYTHING is better with cheese :-)

So here is the end result of garlic-basil linguine, steamed asparagus, a can of peas, grated parmesano-reggiano and some olive oil: