Healthifying my Pasta nights

Pasta has been my go-to solution to the constant "what should we have for supper" that comes up when there's hardly any time to think or prepare food.

Way back when, we bought the cheapest white pasta we could find (think Stop & Shop pasta on sale for the now unheard of 5 boxes for $1!! I still remember lugging that pasta home from the supermarket every time that sale came up, a young wife and mother and full time student just trying to stay afloat and keep everyone fed...) Now, we live in Israel, where even cheap white pasta is not so cheap, and we've long since moved on to whole wheat pastas. We've taste tested a lot of whole wheat pastas, focusing on finding the best one among the affordable options. In America, I tended to buy the Whole Foods brand pastas (stocked up when they were on sale) and one or two shapes from Target, but WF was far better. Now, we've tried lots of kinds here in Israel, the cheapest being the Taaman brand, but it's not so good. So now, I buy mine from Nizat HaDuvdevan for about 6.50 shekels for a 500g bag (roughly 1 lb), which is not bad for a relatively high quality pasta (and it's organic even though I didn't need it be).

In the past, I'd opted to make my own sauce using tomato paste or crushed tomatoes and spices over buying prepared sauce (although in America, I'd buy good sauces on sale and with coupons. I still miss that convenience). Lately I've decided to kick the sauce up a notch. It can be made in advance and stored in the fridge to be heated as necessary. Mine never sits in the fridge more than a few days, so I can't say how long it lasts, but I'd freeze it if I wasn't using in the next 3 days.

Homemade chunky tomato sauce

olive oil
cut vegetables - whatever you have that you have or what you think will work: onions, celery, peppers, eggplant, summer squash (kishuim), tomatoes, mushrooms, etc
tomato paste or crushed tomatoes (packaged or homemade)
water
fresh or dried basil (fresh is best!)
chopped garlic (fresh is best!)
seasonings to taste - salt, black pepper, and any others you want to add like oregano or rosemary or thyme...

Heat olive oil is a large sauce pot. Add vegetables and stir till they are soft and fragrant. Add garlic and continue stirring for a few minutes. Add tomato paste/crushed tomatoes, water, fresh basil and seasonings, and stir well. Continue to stir occasionally while you bring it all to a boil, then lower the flame and simmer for a while. Serve over pasta and garnish with your favorite cheese if you like.

I will admit that this has not come without objections from my family. They prefer when I don't do anything "funny" to their food, but I figured they'd get used to it and eventually come to appreciate it.

This was the first week that only one child objected to all the vegetables in the pasta, so that is major progress, in my opinion!

I serve this supper with a make-your own salad, as well. 

What's your go-to quick, sort of healthy supper?

Tuesday Night, Aug 30, 2011

Today I decided I have to work on getting my family to eat more lentils - they are an amazingly frugal source of protein! My oldest son requested rice, so I figured it was a classic combination.


However, my family members don't really like rice and lentils together, so I had to get creative.
Here's what I came up with:

Choice of:
Brown Rice 
Whole Wheat Spaghetti


Sauteed vegetables with red lentils in tomato sauce


Fresh fruit

Wednesday night - April 27, 2011

Everyone is craving chametz and kitniyot around here! It was only a week, but they are acting like it was a month! Is your family behaving the same way?

I didn't want a carb overload, but I did want to indulge their cravings a bit, so here's what we  had:


Corn soup (saute onion, garlic, red pepper in olive oil. add frozen corn niblets and water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Turn off flame, and puree with an immersion blender. Add some milk, salt, pepper, and fresh chopped scallions (just the green part). Reheat, but don't boil again. Yummy, and easily vegan if you use soymilk or ricemilk...)

Spiral Pasta (whole wheat) with roasted veggies and homemade tomato sauce (we also served plain spiral pasta, and had shredded mozzarella on the table for topping it, for the pickier palettes) Today I roasted onions, red peppers, and zucchini with fresh chopped garlic - the veggies that were just hanging around waiting to be used up!

Make your own salad - lots of lettuce (Yesh has nice, large, crisp heads of lettuce for 1.25 NIS), cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots (all at Yesh for 1.85 or so per kilo), and sliced olives. Served with homemade ranch dressing (still working on the perfect recipe!).

The salad was in my pretty bowls that my 6 year old loves, and thinks are so fancy. She's really into "fancy" things right now, so she ate lots of salad!

Post-Pesach

Well, we worked late into the night motzaei pesach and got everything back in order, more or less. (Still don't have a place for my beautiful turquoise Dutch oven to call home though. It is sitting, quite unceremoniously, under the kitchen table again. So sad.)

Today, everybody just wanted bread and cookies, and crackers too. Somehow though, my little girls were still willing to eat the leftover Pesachdik baked goods!

So I sent my hubby to the store and he came back with tons of chametz, including a couple of long, fresh, baguettes.

Here's what we had for supper:

Pizza baguettes (made with homemade tomato sauce - see the "Homemade Alternatives" page for my super easy, cheater recipe)  - My oldest child suggested we also make a couple of matzah pizzas - he was feeling nostalgic. We skipped the matzah pizzas.

Fingerling potatoes with ketchup (over Pesach, I discovered that my children who do NOT eat potatoes all eagerly eat fingerling potatoes! very interesting discoveries...)

Sliced cucumbers