Thursday, April 3, 2008

Pasta Primavera, sort of



My 11 year old is a fidgeter. The kid won't sit without fidgeting; it drives most everyone nuts. His fidgeting has resulted in untold glasses of milk being dumped on the dinner table, breakage, dropping.... In the past few days, he's had this fascination with his tack hammer. Yes, my kid has a small tool set. It's a good thing for him to have, except at the school table, which is where this hammer has been hanging around. I remove it, he fetches it back. Yesterday, while I was standing next to him giving the boys paper for their daily spelling tests, he was fidgeting with his hammer, and dropped it. On my foot. Mother was greatly displeased, to say the very least. Obviously, that foot ached all day yesterday (today it's just a lovely shade of pale blue). So, he was my "gofer" while I cooked dinner last night. The turkey went into the oven in advance, but what to do about the side dishes? Some reasonable facsimilie of Pasta Primavera seemed in order, as I stood, cranelike, on one foot. Ryan brought, at my behest, all of the partial packages of veggies from the freezer, and I chose broccoli and cauliflower. To these I added freshly sliced carrots, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes. While the penne cooked, I parboiled all of these. Since I've tried sun dried tomatoes once before, and found them too salty, I came up with the bright idea of adding them to the other veggies as they cooked, to transfer the salt. It tasted fine, but everything came out with a lovely reddish brown cast to it; naturally, this caused everyone to question my food. All in all, however, when the pasta was tossed with 2 sticks of butter, garlic powder, oregano and a total of about 1-1/2 pounds of vegetables, it was quite tasty. For dessert? Applesauce muffins, only 6 of which lasted until breakfast time.

APPLESAUCE MUFFINS


1-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup applesauce
1 egg
2 T vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp powdered milk
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg

Stir all ingredients together; batter will be lumpy. Spoon into 24 mini muffin pans and sprinkle sugar or cinnamon-sugar over them. Bake at 400 for 12 to 14 minutes, or until done.

(Again, it's me and the mini muffins. I just feel happier if I can have 2 instead of 1, even if each item is smaller.)

4 comments:

Peter M said...

Marjie, that's a primavera. The recipe for primavera allows for any veggies you have at hand. It's a very forgiveable recipe.

pam said...

The pasta looks good, but I have all the ingredients for those muffins! They are next on my list.

Marjie said...

Peter, thanks for the reassurance. I've never had any Italian friends, and know very little about the food! I make guesses from pictures!

Pam, you're going to love these muffins! And their speed of creation makes them just about perfect!

Anonymous said...

Hey Marjie, I just had to respond to this posting. I swear that my son and your son are the same child inhabiting two bodies! Not only does my young man fidget, he also misjudges how much space is required to accommodate his growing body and feet. There's just not enough room under the table for those size 12 giants. Speaking of which, he needs new shoes AGAIN. Funny thing is, when he no longer fits into his clothes, we hand them down to his UNCLE! Gotta love these big boys! Paula PS: You're not going to believe this, but just as I went ready to submit this message, he knocked over a glass! Whew, luckily empty.