Good 'Ole Standby pasta sauce with whole grain linguine

Cooking My Way Through Co-Vid Lockdown while trying to find Med-diet-ish food your husband will eat. 

In an effort to find something more in line with the diet recommended for Mark's arthritis, we tried fresh linguine made with cauliflower flour and chickpea flour. Both were fine, but the chickpea was better. 

We use any jar of tomato pasta sauce with no sugar, hopefully organic (for the farm workers, not we two consumers). I usually saute some mushrooms, cooked artichoke heart if it is handy, a relatively small amount of chicken or turkey sausage if it is around, sometimes a can of diced tomatoes. Combine in whatever ratio one prefers, taste and adjust with a little garlic or herbs or whatever. Put fresh parm on top, put some green vegetable on the side and that's it!

For dessert, cherry and blueberry pie or crisp or plain with cream sprayed on it. The fruit is supposed to be high in antioxidents, which we try to get in the daily diet.

 Roasted Grape Tomatoes with Tangled Noodles-Make the revised version, not the one below the picture

Original recipe cut and pasted from Food Network. One star as is: I picked this because I had some really extraordinarily flavorful tomatoes and also hoped to make this a no-muss-no-fuss one pot cleanup. I also liked the idea of flavoring the noodles with broth. Sadly enough, it  turned out sticky and not flavorful enough to fix.  I used reg mozzarella instead of smoked because this Cooking My  Way Through The Time of the Co-Vid Lockdown and I had regular on hand.

However! Five Star version: I tried making the noodles again with (! think|) 1 1/2 cups of broth and about 4 ounces of angel hair (2 servings), cooked it by watching and separating the noodles a lot as they got ready, 9 to 11 minutes. I poured in colander, then back into pan, added a little olive oil to loosen it up, and on top added some slow roasted salmon with oil from the day before--about half a pound of unpresentable shreds. They have a lot of flavor, though, and it worked out great for two. A little squeeze of lemon juice and fresh pepper is important--I ran out of lemon and it dropped to 3 stars on that part. 

Next version: I peeled a broccoli stalk, chopped and roasted it alongside the tomatoes. The pieces tasted great.

This probably wouldn't work as well with other pasta shapes--the angel hair and broth ratio just works out to soak up flavor but not get sticky like the previous recipe. I used about twice the broth to angel hair to get the result I wanted.

First Version Ingredients--didn't work for me

3 tablespoons garlic-infused virgin olive oil

4 cups sweet grape tomatoes

Kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper

3 cups low-sodium chicken stock

1 pound angel hair pasta or extra-thin egg noodles

4 ounces smoked mozzarella, roughly chopped

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Drizzle the olive oil over the grape tomatoes, season with salt and pepper and toss to coat. Place the tomatoes on the baking sheet and cook until skins turn a rich golden brown, about 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, heat the chicken stock over low heat. Add the noodles to a large skillet over medium heat, and pour in 1 ladleful of hot stock. Stir to prevent the noodles from sticking together as the stock cooks off. Once the noodles have absorbed all of the stock, add another 1 cup stock. Continue to stir and add the remaining stock 1 cup at a time, waiting until each addition is absorbed before adding more. Once all the stock has been absorbed, stir in the cheese and toss with the roasted tomatoes and their pan drippings. Serve hot.

Cook’s Note

Toss in some torn fresh basil leaves, fresh oregano, thyme or even lemon basil leaves for a nice surprising twist!

Quick One Pot Mac and Cheese with Peas (maybe tuna)

Quick One Pot Mac and Cheese with Peas

Take  a box of prepared mix (We use Amy's Organic, which has extra-small elbow noodles--they cook in 6 to 8 minutes). Measure out a cup of frozen green peas. When you pour the noodles in the boiling water set the timer for 3 minutes. Pour the frozen peas in and set the timer for 3 minutes. Check the noodles and peas. If not done, keep checking every minute until ready. Pour into collender, make the sauce in the pan, mix everything togetherr et voila! C'est fini. Mark loves this dish. 

Other News You Can USe about this dish:  You can make it without butter to get calories down. Giving it a few grinds of fresh pepper helps with the flavor. The peas give it some vegetable and protein. Some hostess in a 1980s cookbook swears that she takes boxed mac and cheese with light tuna stirred in to potlucks and people polish it off. I haven't tried it and am not sure whether it would work for 2020 tastebuds. But. It is what it is.  :-)

 Dave's Frittata

Recipe in Dave and Maria's Cookbook. I've made it a lot of times, most recently to use up leftover roasted little potatoes and other vegetale odds and ends. tty much unbeatable and although much better right out of oven the first time it heats in microwave nicely. I gave this one a dash of marinara on second re-heating. In normal times I would put some fresh salsa on top. 

This recipe has served lots of family brunches and I miss having those family times. Two people sharing the recipe isn't the same.-- especially when one of them isn't very interested in food, anyway and would be just as happy with cold cereal for breakfast. Well, with the occasional blueberry pancake tossed in!