How to hide the greens

I love pasta. I never jumped on the Atkin's bandwagon. At the time the Atkin's diet was taking over the world and restaurants were adding new 'Atkin's friendly' sections, and pizza places were developing nasty cracker thin crusts to place pounds of meat on top, and entire Atkin's Diet grocery stores were being opened I was happily munching my pasta and bread, waiting out the storm. I worked at Starbucks at the time and the Atkin's disciples would order breve lattes. A breve is steamed half-and-half (or heavy cream if the coffee house had it...which Starbucks didn't) and espresso. I love half-and-half and heavy cream and there's nothing wrong with that but even a small latte is 8 ounces. That's a ton of milk fat! I can't imagine that being part of a weight loss program that is sustainable in any way. Any "diet" that pushes bacon and restricts broccoli is illogical.

I wanted pasta last night but I also wanted to use something from my CSA, namely the swiss chard which will stay fresh the least amount of time.

Tomato-Cream pasta

1 jar tomato-basil sauce
1 onion, sliced
1 green pepper, sliced
2 cloves garlic
1/2 cup white wine or 1/4 cup vodka
pinch red pepper flake
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 bunch swiss chard, removing the ribs and roughly chop
1 handful fresh basil, minced
1 pound pasta

Saute onion and pepper over medium high heat until starting to soften. Add garlic and saute for 5 more minutes. Add white wine or vodka and reduce by half (when adding alcohol to a pan always turn off the heat first...especially when using a gas top stove). Add tomato sauce, cream, and red pepper flake. Allow to simmer 10 minutes. Fold in swiss chard and allow to simmer 5 more minutes. Stir in basil just before serving over cooked pasta.

You couldn't go wrong with a couple ounces of pancetta browned up at the beginning or adding some chicken. Or, come to think about it, one of my zucchini chopped up and being sauteed with the onion and pepper would have been good too. Darn! Missed opportunities!

We served the sauce over Nicole Taylor's red pepper pasta. There was about half the sauce left over to freeze for another night.

The Results: This is the quick 'n dirty version of a longer Vodka Pasta. I really do like the longer version better, which involves canned tomatoes and chicken stock instead of the jarred sauce, but sometimes you just don't have the patience for a slow simmer sauce. That in mind, it's pretty darn good. I give it a solid B. I really liked the swiss chard in it which I wouldn't have thought about if I hadn't already had some to use from the CSA box.

The Breakdown: The swiss chard was from the CSA. Which, by the way, the chard was beautiful. We got a couple stalks of red, yellow, green...it was stunning to work with. I got the pasta from the farmer's market and the basil from my garden. The onion, green pepper, tomato sauce, and cream was from the grocery store. I give it a C for local ingredients. I was just really craving a good tomato-cream pasta dish.

Oh! I tried the tarragon vinegar pickled beets. Well, I can say they are the best beets I have ever had. Pretty darn edible, if I do say so myself. I'm still not going to eat them but I wouldn't cry if I were forced to! I actually really enjoy the taste of the pickling juice, I just don't like the underlying beet flavor that is still there. I think beet lovers will really love them.