Moosewood Spicy Penne Puttanesca

I ended up clueless last night as to what to pack for lunch today so I raided the freezer again and found one of those new frozen entrees from Moosewood Restaurant. I, of course, have heard a lot about this restaurant and I have seen several of their cookbooks in the bookstores and online. In fact, my boss brought one in last week for me to look at and this exact recipe was in there, so when I was in the store and saw it, I got it. This was a frozen entree, so there's only so much you can expect. I would, however, like to try making this recipe from scratch someday just to see how good it can really be.

There is no way I can describe this without laughing (I could never talk like this and keep a straight face, I always wondered how waiters do it when they have to stand there and tell you the specials and describe all the food and sauces and such, I usually start laughing), so I will just type the description that is on the box and you can read it: Spicy Penne Puttanesca - oven-roasted onions & peppers simmered in a spicy tomato sauce with calamata olives & capers served over penne pasta. Well, that wasn't too bad, I don't guess, but I would still feel silly talking like that.

When I heated this up last night, there was more in the package than would fit into the lunchbox so I had a little bit left over that I tried. It is good, but I wouldn't call it spectacular or anything. I definitely like all of the stuff that is in this recipe, but like I said before, I think this is probably something that would be a whole lot better if I made it from scratch. There's another one for the list of things to do...

I threw in a salad of Spicy Arugula with Red & Green Baby Spinach which I sprinkled with some slivered almonds and some dried cranberries just to make it a little bit more interesting. The dressing in the blue container is, as always, just olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a few drops of sesame oil. There's always a little bit of space left there when I carry the dressing container, so this time I threw in some raw cashews that I found at the health food store in the bulk bins. They were labeled "raw", and there's definitely no salt or oil on them, so I am assuming that they are. Mmmmmmm... I love cashews.

I had just a few organic strawberries left that I picked up at the health food store a week or so ago, and I would hate to lose those things to mold, so into the lunchbox they went. My dehydrator should be arriving later this week, and I am really excited about using it to make raw desserts by mixing all kinds of fruits and nuts in the food processor and then dehydrating clumps of the mixtures into chewy cookies. Hopefully, once that dehydrator is here, I will never lose any fruit in the fridge again. I will finally be able to buy those huge containers of fresh fruit when they go on sale because they want to get rid of them and actually be able to USE all of it without it going bad.

Well, that's lunch for Wednesday. On a side note, I need to get a new battery for my scale, because I can definitely tell that I have been losing weight since I started paying attention to the amount of fat and simple carbs in my meals. Yipee!

Have a great day and I'll see everybody tomorrow!