Pasta à la Portland

Pasta has become our favorite dish here.  No competition, so far…  I’m not sure if it’s because it’s affordable, or because it’s good, or maybe because it’s quick,  but we do have a nice recipe that we have played around with on a couple of rainy nights.  When I say a couple of nights, I mean most, so we eat this pasta quite frequently.  Since there are plenty of great chefs, I’m sure it could be transformed into an even more magnificent meal.  This is what we’ve come up with:

1 Box of Fusilli noodles

1 Jar of Cabernet Marinara (we’ve also used Garlic, Garlic, Garlic sauce, as well)

1 Anaheim Pepper, chopped finely

1 Yellow Squash, sliced

1 Zucchini, sliced

LOTS OF GARLIC, minced (3 cloves, usually)

6-8 Crimini Mushrooms, sliced

These are the ingredients that we use most often for our almost-famous pasta.  We sauté the squash, zucchini, garlic, pepper, and mushrooms together over enough olive oil to coat the pan.  We haven’t used one of those fancy non-stick pans yet, so we have to keep the pan well coated.  When the noodles are about 5 minutes from al dente, we add the pasta sauce to the vegetables, and hope we don’t overcook them.  Luckily, no vegetables have been lost to that dreadful soggy threat.  Our final step is to pour the marinara-vegetable mix over our fun spiral noodles, and then top it off with freshly shredded Mozzarella or Parmesan.  We make pretty large portions here, so we have some nice lunch options for a couple of days.  Since we don’t have an oven (that works), toaster, or microwave, we have found that heating our pasta in a small saucepan with a little bit of olive oil works just fine.  This method probably isn’t the best for our arteries, but one day, just maybe, we might have another heating device.  Well, this is a tasty pasta combination and we sure do enjoy it here, but suggestions are always helpful…for reasons I’m sure you’ve gathered by now…