Vegetarian Pasta Recipe

I can't even tell you how infrequently I eat pasta. Don't know why, I'm just not a big pasta person. So much so that one of my old roommates says that she is still out of the habit of eating pasta because we never made it when we lived together.

I have to say this is much to the chagrin of my current roommate too, my boyfriend. This fellow, well he could probably up and run a marathon tomorrow without training because that's just the body type is. He could live on carbs. In fact as I'm writing this, he's eating the meal pictured above and just exclaimed, "I LIKE PASTA!"

But every once in a while, maybe a couple times a year, I do pasta. And when I do pasta I do it right, meaning I make my own sauce, I make garlic bread, wine, the whole nine yards. (Well, the whole eight yards because I've never actually made my own pasta, but I will one of these days...)

This vegetarian pasta recipe has the classics: tomatoes, basil, garlic but also some unexpected pops of flavor like black olives and walnuts. (These are add-ons though so if you don't jive with them feel free to leave them off.) Walnuts add in a little omega-3 action not often found in a vegetarian pasta recipe and I also throw in some broccoli, you know, when I need to get that green in. But not always. Sometimes it's purely indulgent homemade pasta sauce goodness.

Ingredients

1 pound bow-tie pasta (or any kind, I just think these are cute)

For the sauce:

Either a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes or the equivalent in fresh tomatoes (If it happens to be August and organic tomatoes are coming out of the grocery store's ears at a reasonable price then I go with that. If it's the other 11 months of the year, I just buy organic canned.)
5 cloves of garlic
1 medium white onion
Olive oil
Handful of chopped basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
Salt
Optional: you can really throw any veggie into this sauce, mushrooms, carrots, spinach all come to mind...especially if you're trying to be sneaky with the little ones. Blend it at the end and they won't even notice. Tehehe.

Optional toppings:

Black olives
Walnuts
Broccoli
Parmesan (not really optional in my book)

Directions

Get a pot of water boiling for the pasta.
Put a saute pan over med heat, add olive oil and chopped onion. Let sit for 5 minutes or so, until translucent then throw in the tomatoes, garlic and salt. Allow to cook for 15 minutes or until tomatoes breakdown and it starts to become a sauce. Add basil and oregano.
Add pasta to boiling water and cook to package instructions, usually 12 minutes-ish.
Drain pasta, top with your deliciously homemade sauce and any toppings you've opted into!

So if you're normal and not me, you probably eat pasta more than twice a year. If you're used to just heating up a jar of sauce and boiling your noodles, give this vegetarian pasta recipe a whirl. It's refreshing in its simplicity and oh-so-comforting.