Garlic-tomato (paste) pasta with peas and basil

Once in a while, you find yourself at home without a lot of groceries on hand and you need to make a quick dinner.  You haven't thought much about it in advance so you need to come up with something using what you have in the house and you want it to be relatively quick to prepare.

Using tomato paste is not only convenient but gives the sauce a deep, rich flavor

That was me last Sunday night.  It was a busy weekend, mostly because my husband and I were tackling a little home project of painting one of our rooms in preparation for new carpet installation.  

Even when it's busy, I still like to cook for my family on the weekends as much as I can.  In recent years, our cravings for take out and eating out has dwindled so much and weekends are when I get the chance to make hot meals we can all dig into together at the same time.  So last Sunday, I started thinking about dinner and remembered a pasta recipe I'd pulled out from a magazine recently.

Here's what I like about this pasta dish...you use tomato paste as the basis for the sauce.  So no tomatoes, no problem!  When I buy a new container of tomato paste, I like to portion out the extra in tablespoon mounds and freeze them.  This way, I can grab what I need from the freezer when a recipe calls for it.  I often use tomato paste - loosened with a bit of hot water and seasoned with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and dry oregano - to make a tomato "sauce" base for pizza at home.

This dinner comes together in under 30 minutes.  Olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, tomato paste, and some red pepper flakes get cooked down with some pasta water.  Finish cooking the pasta - thin spaghetti in this case - in the liquid and stir in some peas (always in my freezer) and a handful of fresh basil (which I snip from my little herb box).  If you like and have time, add a little protein like I did with shrimp.  I also grabbed that from the freezer and simply cooked it up in the same pan before starting the sauce.

The pasta turned out flavorful and hearty.  I served it with garlic bread, which I'd made a few days earlier and tucked away in the freezer (maybe I was subconsciously planning this meal, but my son loves garlic bread).  That went in the oven while I made the pasta and we had a fortifying dinner!

Kid in the kitchen (summer edition)

A few years ago, if you had told me that my son would be interested in helping out in the kitchen and cooking with me, I would have been skeptical.  He wasn't one of those kids who jumped at the chance to get his hands dirty in the kitchen.  But I have to say that things have changed quite a bit. 

Wanting to share one of my interests with him, I've been luring him into the kitchen, bit by bit, in the last couple of years.  And now, having him there, helping me crack some eggs or completing a whole recipe together, is not uncommon.  He might not have a big passion for cooking or baking but I think he's figured out that working/playing in the kitchen can be a lot of fun.  I like to think that he learns a little something in the process when we make something together, and I know he appreciates the sense of accomplishment and the tasty reward at the end!

Spaghetti Carbonara: one of the simple dishes my little guy and I made together this summer

So this summer, I made a goal.  I wanted to get the little guy in the kitchen for a few cooking "sessions".  Beyond one-off projects or just stepping in to help me whisk something or to spread a batter here and there, I wanted to teach him how to make a few simple dishes from beginning to end.  We get to spend time together (cooking and eating) and longer-term, I hope that by cooking more and more, he'll be able to make basic meals for himself down the line as an adult.

Well, the summer flew by fast.  It can be hard to carve out time for "cooking lessons" but we managed when I look back at it.  As I've posted before, we were in the kitchen making fun things like pudding pops and grilled chocolate sandwiches but we also collaborated on a few others, including some savory dishes.  The trick was finding easy and relatively quick dishes that the little one would enjoy because then there'd be motivation to keep going.  I think we did all right since he was a big fan of everything he cooked up.

So you know how moms do - we talk about our kids!  In that spirit, please bear with me as I share some of the cooking sessions I had with my little guy this summer...