The Sweatshop of Love Blog

There are so many vegetables in my house right now I’m losing track of them! I set a bag of onions in the pantry that needed to be cleaned and just completely forgot about it. Last night I found them swarming with fruit flies and the skins covered in mold. I just cleaned them off and peeled a few layers off. I will smell like onions for the rest of the day, but I saved those onions!

My favorite go-to recipe when I have a ton of vegetables is a big veggie pasta dish.

Ingredients (for 2):

4 oz dry pasta

1/4 small can of tomato paste

1/3 huge can of tomatoes (diced, stewed, whatevs)

A splash of olive oil

Onion to taste (I use a whole onion, or half of a monster onion because I love onion)

Garlic to taste (I use two cloves because I love garlic)

Seasonings – I use fennel seeds, fresh cracked pepper, oregano, and red pepper flakes.

Veggies – I used fresh corn on the cob, baby bellas, and zucchini, but anything you’ve got works!

Since I had that corn, I shucked it and threw that on the grill pan right away. Zucchini takes a little while to cook, so I heated some oil in my wok, sliced up the zucchini, and got that cooking, too. The veggie cook times will vary depending on what you are using. If I had broccoli instead of zucchini I would wait until I threw my pasta in boiling water before starting to cook it.

While the zucchini and corn got a head start, I chopped my mushrooms and onion. I started boiling some water and threw in the onions with the zucchini, because that takes a little while to get soft, too.

I threw in the pasta and set the timer for 7 minutes. I threw the chopped mushrooms in with the zucchini and onion. The corn was done grilling so I took it off the grill pan and let it cool a little.

My mom picked up a couple of these corn slicer things that looked pretty silly in the package, but look at that! It totally worked. It cut the corn right down to the core, too; I always have trouble leaving too much corn on the core when I try to slice it off with a knife. As silly as this thing is, it worked, and I got a ton more corn than I would have had I tried to slice it myself with a knife. Silly gadget success!

I threw the corn in the wok, too, along with the garlic.

When there were about 3 minutes left for the pasta I dumped in the tomatoes, the tomato paste, and the seasonings and mixed it all together. When the pasta is done I drained it and added it to the wok and mixed it all up, too.

I let mine sit on the stove top for a few minutes to work together the spices and burn off some of that extra tomato liquid. I hate extra tomato liquid.

Dish it up! Grate some parmesan over the top and in about 20 minutes you’ve got a fresh pasta dish for two that doesn’t even use canned pasta sauce. The only way to get this more healthy is to can your own tomatoes and make your own tomato paste, which I haven’t quite gotten to yet.

Still, this is pretty close to a perfect meal.

I also had a chance to attempt making pumpernickel in the bread maker. I say attempt because I have trouble making bread. It’s an illness.

I thought I messed this up, too! I’ve never made pumpernickel before, but all the other breads I’ve made in the bread maker have needed 2-4 oz more water than the recipe calls for. So I added 2 more oz of water!

It was so watery, I really didn’t think it was going to turn out at all.

But it worked! I’m going to take out those extra 2 oz, though, because it deflated a little, but it made an amazing tomato sandwich this afternoon!

It is so nice having so many vegetables around! There are so many meal options at every turn!