Love to Cook

Have you discovered Pintrest yet? Oh my, it's super wonderful, but super dangerous! I could spend all too many hours on it, but what fun inspiration and style is shares. I am just getting started on it, having only set up categories and pinned a few things. One of my categories is "love to cook." I follow several food blogs on a regular basis, getting tasty advice for what to serve my family for meals. I'm a total recipe-follower: I love to cook but I'm not inventing anything {although I often get home from wedding tastings and try to re-create the beauties that I've tasted.. again, I'm a recipe-follower}. I do love to be in the kitchen, I love feeding my family healthy, seasonal and exciting meals, and I love when my husband is thrilled with dinner.

This week, we visited the farmer's market and came across the end of summer tomato stash, along with oodles of other fresh veggies.
{my cutie little tomato-helper}

It's hard enough to get us all to eat one great veggie each night, let alone six or seven. With a visit to the market, and a gift from a friends' family garden, I was able to finally pull enough from the recipes that I've been learning from and create a blog-worthy late summer dish.
{fresh from ellen's garden!}



Here's what you will need:

12 oz. pasta (I love Rigatoni)
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium red onion, very thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 ears of corn, cooked and the kernels removed
fresh peas, cooked and seasoned with oregano, salt and pepper
1.5 pints tomatoes (I used a mixture of different kinds)
1/3 cup pitted black olives
protein! (I used chicken, seasoned with oregano, salt and pepper), but shrimp or tofu would be great, too.
3 cups loosely packed baby spinach or arugula
1 Tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
8 oz. feta, crumbled
extra virgin olive oil
1 Lemon

Cook pasta according to package directions. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Heat the evoo in a large skillet (love the le crueset large pan), saute the onion + garlic about 5 - 6 minutes. Add the tomatoes, olives, peas and corn. Cook about 5 minutes. Add the protein (cooked chicken, if using chicken).

Return pasta to the large pot with 1/4 cup of the reserved pasta cooking water. Add tomato and protein mixture, spinach, parsley, and feta. Toss until spinach wilts. Can add more pasta water if necessary to make pasta moist and saucy. Drizzle each serving with extra virgin olive oil and lemon.

{yum}



It was wonderful with a crisp glass of white!