Uh-Oh Pasta!

Yesterday was one heck of a busy day. The highlight being----I spent about 3 hours upstairs cleaning my wonderful (please note- WONDERFUL) kids' bathroom (including the toilet) as well as their rooms as well as the dad's *WONDERFUL* "office." So yeah, back-breaking work, literally. At least my daughter helped me towards the end by helping me shred some ancient stack of paper that the dad had saved for I-don't-know-what-or-why-or-how many eons........finally even the shredder gave up! Really! It just refused to shred any more paper! Just got over-heated and went kaput!

So yeah, as expected, things got all delayed and dinner time was fast approaching and I had not even thought of what I was going to cook. Of course, my brilliant mind said to me, "PASTA!" Fastest thing to make on a crazy weeknight, right?

The basics: Pasta, of course (I used the egg noodles kind), onions, garlic, Italian seasoning, olive oil, salt.

I threw in: Ground Turkey, Cilantro, spinach (I had some leftover spinach that needed to be utilized else it'd have gone rotten!), green onion (mm hmm!), 1 tomato, a handful of almonds, red crushed pepper, lemon juice.

First: I roughly chopped up a medium size onion and a couple cloves of garlic and quickly sauteed it in a pan. Threw in the ground turkey, seasoned it with salt & the Italian seasoning plus some red crushed pepper. Cooked the turkey- took like 5-7 minutes straight! No kidding!

Meanwhile: I had a pot of water come to a boil, nicely salted it and put in the pasta to cook. Everybody knows how to cook pasta, right? I still check the package instructions for the cooking time.........some types call for 6 mins, some 7 while some others suggest cooking for 12 mins....... this one called for 6 mins. Also had a handful of almonds run in the m-wave for about a minute and a half to toast them. Believe me, that m-waving brought out the oils in the almonds and of course, smelled awesome!

Then: I put the cooked pasta into the pan with the cooked turkey. Mixed it up gently.

Finally: Took those toasted almonds, a little bit of fresh cilantro, that leftover handful of spinach, a couple green onions, 1 nice juicy tomato in the food processor. Added salt and some red crushed pepper. And then some lemon juice. Gave it a quick round in the processor--- not too fine, just short of being completely fine. Folded this into that pasta+turkey. In the end, sprinkled some freshly ground black pepper.

The Husband's Reaction on the phone: "Uh-Oh, wonder what you came up with........."


The Husband's Reaction after eating a fork-full of that "Uh-Oh" Creation: Oh man! This is EXCELLENT! (and he went for seconds and thirds!)


The Kids: The standard, "This is yummy, mommy!"


The Creator- Yours Truly: Thoroughly pleased with self.

Pasta with that yummy goodness...........

The Uh-Oh Pasta!

Note to Self: IF I make this pasta again, I should add some red color to it...........perhaps just add a few cherry tomatoes to make it look attractive...........looks do matter when it comes to food!