Eat Your Vegetables... and Pasta!

The other week I stumbled across a recipe and photo that featured a bright green sauce atop a nice bed of rotini pasta. Having started a new menu plan to steer myself in the direction of more vegetables and whole grains, a pasta sauce made primarily of broccoli and feta cheese had my attention immediately.

I’m not terribly adventurous with vegetables, generally sticking to green beans, carrots, and peppers, but since I do enjoy steamed broccoli and I obviously can’t say “no” to pasta and cheese, I couldn’t resist this recipe. It only required a touch of oil to cook down some garlic and shallots before adding the broccoli, lemon juice, and parsley. I then combined it with just a bit of feta and some reserved pasta water. It was a huge deal for me to cook with onions, but I figured since they were going to be obliterated in the food processor anyway, I could handle it. It is another vegetable, after all.

I used whole wheat angel hair and it was seriously delicious, but I think next time I would either add a little more water to thin it out or use sturdier rigate pasta. Served with a sliced tomato and some little gems from the Fairway olive bar, I managed to find a dish that satisfies both my vegetable plan and my obsession with pasta.

The left over feta enjoyed a successful second life in a vegetable dip I made for lunches this past week. Using some left over sun dried tomatoes and a little milk, the result was a slightly addictive dip that a coworker described as tasting like “Jersey Shore pizza.” Yet another delicious trick to eat more vegetables!