After days on end of eating and drinking more heavy things than I’d like to remember, it was time last night to get back to eating something with more nutritional value than butter and sugar.
As the workday wound down, I began searching the Web for a vegetable pasta dish that inspired me. Epicurious wasn’t much help, so I went to Serious Eats, where I found this recipe by Mario Batali for Spaghetti al Pomodoro. Since it’s not exactly tomato season, I was undecided when I went to the store as to whether to use fresh or canned tomatoes, but I bought two pints of cherry tomatoes that looked pretty good, and the dish came out pretty well (except for this: next time do NOT freely pour red pepper flakes all over the tomatoes…too hot).
For dessert, I made a variation of an apple crisp recipe from The Joy of Cooking. I peeled and sliced four granny smith apples. Then I put a half cup each of whole wheat flour and brown sugar into a food processor. I added to that about a quarter-cup of oatmeal, a handful of whole almonds and a teaspoon of cinnamon (update: and salt! don’t forget salt…a healthy pinch). Then I put some cubed cold butter in there (a little more than half a stick) and blended it all up. I poured the mixture over the apples, and baked at 375 for 50 min. We ate it with Hagen Daas vanilla…Yum!
[...] salsa, a tablespoon of hot red pepper relish, some cayenne pepper and a sprinkling (but not too much) of red pepper flakes into my food processor and whirred it all up. That became the main ingredient [...]