Our family LOVES pasta. We could eat pasta several times a week and be perfectly happy. Except for the whole make it from scratch part. I’m not sure I could handle making it several times a week.
We definitely prefer our pasta homemade but usually keep a few boxes of assorted pastas on hand for quick meals, like tonight. Tonight the longest part of dinner was making our favorite pesto. Most store bought pesto is off limits because they have pine nuts, a member of the tree nut family. Of course, while some people who are allergic to tree nuts can still eat pine nuts, I cannot. Plus, once I started making my own pesto I started noticing how much oil store bought pesto sometimes is swimming in. Homemade is a win-win for us. We sneak in some super food kale to make it even better for us and dinner is served, pasta green. Here is my Hempseed Kale Pesto! So stay tuned. You can do that by subscribing to my blog to the right of this post. Add your email address. Hit subscribe and you are set.
Another way we love pasta is with good old tomato sauce. I love to make my own but another favorite for us is Rose Romano’s Gourmet Marinara with Bell Pepper. We LOVE the red bell pepper – spoon, jar, skip the pasta. Thankyouverymuch. If I make it myself it is pretty awesome to smell tomato sauce simmering on the stove for a few hours, cooking down to the perfect blend of tomato and spice. You know, everything nice? And there you have our pasta red. Oh yeah,don’t forget to grate a little pecorino romano or parmesan and make it fresh. The stuff in the shake it container simply doesn’t compare.
Our third and most time consuming way to enjoy pasta is pasta white or pasta bianco if you need a fancy name. We love making variations of a white sauce and truly, it isn’t hard. You just need to stay with it and voila you have your very own white sauce. Trust me, you can even make an amazing Alfredo that doesn’t come from a jar. I will share that recipe with you next week but for now, make sure you have butter, flour, salt, pepper, and milk or cream. Throw in your favorite cheese – we go for a sharp cheddar, parmesan or pecorino romano. However, one of these days I am going to try a blue cheese or gorgonzola to make a super yummy blue cheese mac and cheese. It will be amazing.
Don’t forget to check out tomorrow’s recipe for Homemade Pesto {Nut-Free}!