Food and Blogging (but not food blog)

Earlier this week, Mizmell shared her solutions to feeding unexpected guests. I promised I’d share one of our quick recipes, too. As you can see from the photo, the Consort thinks this particular recipe is perfect for those last-minute guesses ;-)


Note the splatters on the page. We are messy cooks.

What’s great about this recipe is that you probably already have all these ingredients in your cupboard (because everybody keeps pine nuts on hand, right?). I would have made some this week, just so I could take pictures for this post, except we had it when our Boston friends were visiting a few weeks ago, and we had pasta twice already this week (once with the last of the season’s basil – the girls made pesto; and once with vodka sauce—jarred, but all-natural and oh, so good) and I wasn’t sure that the Consort would be happy with pasta three times in one week (he’s all about ‘variety’ and crap like that, the crazy guy).

Here you go: Tomato Pesto Pasta Sauce, from Quick Vegetarian Pleasures

1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
6-oz. can tomato paste
1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
2 teaspoons dried basil
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup grated parmesan or Romano cheese
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper to taste

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl. You’re done. Ta-daaaaa! Now go socialize with your last-minutes guests.

Actually, I often mix in 2-3 tablespoons of the pasta water to the sauce to thin it a bit. And don’t forget this sauce goes on top of one pound of pasta, so you’ll have to cook that up, too. The cookbook says capellini, but we’ve made this on everything from thin spaghetti to penne, and it always tastes great.

Oh, and lest I forget: MizMell also urged me to join National Blog Posting Month (or, NaBloPoMo). I figured, since I failed so miserably at NaNoWriMo last year, that I probably should have started smaller, and posting on my blog daily (including weekends!) probably has a better chance of success than writing 50,000 words of a novel (Note: you’re just promising to post daily, not lengthily). If anyone else would like to join, let me know and I can send you an invite (you can do it yourself, but this way you’d be automatically added to my friends list, which currently numbers one friend: MizMell). This would be a wonderful way for people who have not blogged in a year (or two) to get back into it. *hint, hint*