Roasted Garlic & Spinach Pasta

Today's lunch ended up being something that I just whipped up at the last minute yesterday evening because I spent most of my time tinkering around with that veggie burger recipe from my previous post. I think that I definitely made a little bit of progress, but also realized another modification that I need to make in order to counteract a slight change in texture that my original change made, if that makes any sense. I'll share what I did, and the delicious results, either tomorrow or the next day because I made several burgers, and I'm experimenting with the whole freezing them thing too because once that recipe is perfected I want to be able to spend big chunks of time, like on weekends, cranking these things out so I can keep myself stocked up with a good supply.

For today's lunch though, I just whipped up a quick pasta dish by boiling some Whole Wheat Spaghetti for 12 minutes or so. Then I drained it, returned it to the hot pot and added 1 Tbsp. of Olive Oil. I threw in some fresh Baby Spinach leaves and wilted them down, and then added some nice big chunks of Roasted Garlic that I had cooked up in a skillet. I guess, technically, that's not roasted, but that's what I like to call it. I just love great big pieces of garlic when you cook them until they get all nice and brown and sweet. YUM! The only fat I added to the dish was the tablespoon of Olive Oil, and this is just a small portion of the entire pot of pasta in my lunchbox today, so this is actually semi-healthy.

To go along with my pasta, instead of bringing a bunch of bread like I used to do, I brought some yummy veggies instead. I had some fresh Asparagus hanging out in the fridge that I REALLY needed to use. I bought it a while back when I spotted it on sale and hadn't used any of it yet. I just put a few pieces in a Corningware covered dish, sprinkled some water on it and then popped it into the microwave for a couple of minutes. I like cooking it that way because it makes it so green, and it stays so crisp & crunchy. Rather than mix up some kind of lemon based sauce to go with the Asparagus, I took the easy way out and just threw a slice of fresh lemon on there. After I heat this up at work in the microwave then I'll just squeeze the lemon juice all over it. Mmmmm... I love Asparagus.

Then I've got some more Peas & Carrots from the freezer. I didn't like these a whole lot when I first started bringing them. They were okay, but not great, because peas have never been one of my most favorite things in the world, but I'm really starting to like these. I actually look forward to eating them now, because of their taste, and no longer pack them JUST to be packing something healthier. So that's good.

And finally, for dessert, I brought some more of those, what I like to call Raw Fudgy Treats, which are just equal parts of raisins and walnuts processed in the food processor until they magically turn into this "dough" that you can roll up into balls. I swear they taste like fudge. I tried to jazz mine up a little bit by trying an idea from over at Vegan Lunch Box and I rolled them in Cocoa Powder. They just immediately soaked it up though, which made them have this wet Cocoa outside, which is kinda' messy, but it definitely tastes good. I guess if I wanted them to have a dry coating of Cocoa Powder then I would probably have to completely pack them in it until the outsides got dry enough to not get the Cocoa wet anymore. Maybe I'll just stick to rolling mine in Coconut, or nothing at all. These make great desserts for lunches when you discover that there's nothing sweet in the house to pack. They are yummy and extremely rich.

So that does it for Tuesday. This was easy to fix, and it's one of my favorite ways to eat pasta. In fact, it's one of the things that I always keep in my mind when dining out in case I have to do a special request for a vegan meal, because almost any restaurant that serves pasta could make something like this with no problem. I haven't had to resort to asking for it yet, but you never know.

Thanks for reading my blog today. See everybody on Wednesday!