Pasta Primavera

Lately, I've felt the need to lighten our meals a bit, ie. cook less meat. Mainly, because a lot of the meals that I cooked in honor of Jeff were meat heavy, and I'm also taking the start of this year's half-marathon training more seriously than before. So, I put together a vegetarian meal based roughly off of this recipe: Rigatoni with Eggplant Puree. I added my own spin by grilling all the vegetables first instead of roasting, because it's quicker and I'm impatient when I'm hungry. Also, instead of puree-ing everything, I reserved half of the vegetables to sautee so that there would be more texture and you could see what went into the sauce. Lastly, I used whole wheat penne.

You'd think that a meal like that would send Raquel to the taqueria down the street, but she actually really liked it! In fact, she took leftovers for lunch the next day. Seeing as how she normally needs meat in most meals and she's not a huge fan of wheat pasta, it's a miracle that she even finished her meal. Just from that healthy transformation, I feel like my work here is done. Amazingly, she said she didn't miss the meat. Here were my changes:

Modifications:
-use whole wheat pasta
-substitute red bell pepper for the tomatoes (that's just cause Raquel doesn't like tomatoes)
-grill the eggplant and bell peppers, reserve half to sautee at end. *
-blanch broccoli, and sautee in white wine, garlic, onions, and red pepper flakes.
-Add reserved veggies, cooked pasta, and pureed vegetables to sautee pan at end to throw everything together.
-use half the amount of Parmesan suggested, the veggies already have enough flavor.

*Nota bene -
Don't make the same rookie mistake I made. I had to taste test the wine before adding it to the sauce, just to make sure it was ok. That involved finishing a glass before grilling and getting tipsy. Thus, making it easier to burn your hand on the grill lid and missing the handle. So while war wounds sound cool, having a huge burn scar across three fingers is unattractive. I'd also like to note that burning your hand is a very quick way to get sober.