In which I make shit up.
So I was *supposed* to go over Alec's last night and watch Serenity but nnoooOOOOoooooooooo. I got in the car to head back to my apartment to grab a quick meal before going into Philly and WHAM! I suddenly got all headachey and nauseous and it was the worst 15-minute drive home EVER. I don't know WHAT the hell happened, but I was not going to get back into said car and sit in traffic for a 45-minute drive into Philly. Not even for Serenity. Which is saying something, so y'all get an idea of how shitty I suddenly felt.
So I bailed on Alec and Serenity (::sniffles::) and crawled into bed to suffer in relative peace. I snoozed on and off for a little while and then got up to my alarm in time to watch the latest episode of Top Chef... which wasn't on. BOO. Stupid Bravo and their stupid only airing repeats this week and not telling me. BOO.
So it is 10:30pm and I realize that I am actually hungry and my tummy is better than it was. It has been 9.5 hours since I last ate something, so I should damn well be hungry. I want pasta. But I want something relatively light because I refuse to feel sick again. And I don't want to default to another bowl of chicken and stars soup because I'm getting freaking sick of it. So pasta. But I have no pasta sauce. Shit. OK, time to improvise. I've got a can of diced tomtatos, that is a start... let's see, what else, can't just do tomatos... dammit my last zucchini is bad... hm, I've got frozen spinach. OK. Let's see what happens. AND IT TURNED OUT TO BE THE BEST FREAKING PASTA SAUCE I'VE EVER MADE. And now I will share with you all:
How to make the tastiest and laziest pasta sauce ever...
Boil water and put in pasta. I had small rigatoni, which worked really well, but use whatever is handy.
Take large chunk of frozen spinach (I had to hack a bunch off with a knife because it had frozen into a spinach brick)... it looked like about 1.5 cups... and put in hot frying pan. No, don't defrost, don't add oil to the pan, just put the chunk in and break it up with a spoon as the heat melts the ice. You'll know your pan is hot enough if the water melting off basically evaporates immediately but your spinach doesn't burn.
Drain can of diced tomatos. I had the "garlic and onion" kind, whatever. Once spinach is mostly broken up and defrosted, add tomatos. Cook for a while. Add garlic powder (I had no fresh garlic on hand, I know, I am a horrible person), Italian seasoning, ground pepper, and, most importantly, red pepper flakes. See, this is the key. Add red pepper flakes to what looks like what you would like. Then add more.
(What actually happened was that I added some flakes, stirred, tasted, and decided to add more flakes. I then proceeded to open the wrong side of the red pepper flakes container and dump like 3 tablespoons of flakes onto my 8" pan of sauce. With an emphatic "well, shit" I took a spoon and scooped out a large portion of the pile without taking any of my veggies out of my sauce. In the end it equaled the perfect spicy. Win.)
Leave the sauce with the burner on low while you drain the pasta. Drizzle olive oil on pasta and toss. You can either drop it back into the pot and toss with the sauce then, or put a serving of pasta in a bowl and then add sauce, whatever works. Top with parmesean cheese.
=HAPPINESS.
I had leftovers today for lunch.
I think I may make it again for dinner after seminar tonight.
I then proceeded to stay up until 12:30 playing Chrono Trigger.
For as sick as I was feeling, it all turned out pretty well.
So I bailed on Alec and Serenity (::sniffles::) and crawled into bed to suffer in relative peace. I snoozed on and off for a little while and then got up to my alarm in time to watch the latest episode of Top Chef... which wasn't on. BOO. Stupid Bravo and their stupid only airing repeats this week and not telling me. BOO.
So it is 10:30pm and I realize that I am actually hungry and my tummy is better than it was. It has been 9.5 hours since I last ate something, so I should damn well be hungry. I want pasta. But I want something relatively light because I refuse to feel sick again. And I don't want to default to another bowl of chicken and stars soup because I'm getting freaking sick of it. So pasta. But I have no pasta sauce. Shit. OK, time to improvise. I've got a can of diced tomtatos, that is a start... let's see, what else, can't just do tomatos... dammit my last zucchini is bad... hm, I've got frozen spinach. OK. Let's see what happens. AND IT TURNED OUT TO BE THE BEST FREAKING PASTA SAUCE I'VE EVER MADE. And now I will share with you all:
How to make the tastiest and laziest pasta sauce ever...
Boil water and put in pasta. I had small rigatoni, which worked really well, but use whatever is handy.
Take large chunk of frozen spinach (I had to hack a bunch off with a knife because it had frozen into a spinach brick)... it looked like about 1.5 cups... and put in hot frying pan. No, don't defrost, don't add oil to the pan, just put the chunk in and break it up with a spoon as the heat melts the ice. You'll know your pan is hot enough if the water melting off basically evaporates immediately but your spinach doesn't burn.
Drain can of diced tomatos. I had the "garlic and onion" kind, whatever. Once spinach is mostly broken up and defrosted, add tomatos. Cook for a while. Add garlic powder (I had no fresh garlic on hand, I know, I am a horrible person), Italian seasoning, ground pepper, and, most importantly, red pepper flakes. See, this is the key. Add red pepper flakes to what looks like what you would like. Then add more.
(What actually happened was that I added some flakes, stirred, tasted, and decided to add more flakes. I then proceeded to open the wrong side of the red pepper flakes container and dump like 3 tablespoons of flakes onto my 8" pan of sauce. With an emphatic "well, shit" I took a spoon and scooped out a large portion of the pile without taking any of my veggies out of my sauce. In the end it equaled the perfect spicy. Win.)
Leave the sauce with the burner on low while you drain the pasta. Drizzle olive oil on pasta and toss. You can either drop it back into the pot and toss with the sauce then, or put a serving of pasta in a bowl and then add sauce, whatever works. Top with parmesean cheese.
=HAPPINESS.
I had leftovers today for lunch.
I think I may make it again for dinner after seminar tonight.
I then proceeded to stay up until 12:30 playing Chrono Trigger.
For as sick as I was feeling, it all turned out pretty well.