Pasta Three Ways, or Cooking for One

I’ve been living at home so I’m used to cooking for three (often with a bit left over)–and I’ve always baked for an army. I’m going through a bit of an adjustment period cooking for just me.

For example, Friday night I decided to make myself pasta and homemade sauce (pictured above). I only used a small can of diced tomatoes, a bit of tomato paste, some sauteed mushrooms, and some olive oil to make the sauce. But I really wanted it to be light on the pasta, mainly just chunks of tomato, mushrooms, and olive oil, none of this heavy red sauce that I could have just gotten out of a jar. So to get the ratio of sauce to pasta right I decided to make a whole box of pasta. Apparently the fact that a whole box was easily enough for three  with seconds or leftovers for one slipped my mind. I should have just used half a box and half the sauce and frozen the left over sauce.

Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. So I was left with enough pasta to feed a family of 3-4 for just me. I’m on a budget so I didn’t want to wind up tossing the leftovers. On the other hand, I didn’t want to eat the same thing for three (admittedly large and satisfying) meals in a row.

The first night: shrimp and pine nuts

Letchworth State Park

As promised, the world photo day runner up–Letchworth State Park–is here. I was planning on waiting another couple of days to post it so I had a bit more time to cull my favorites out of the collection. Today, however, is the 100th birthday of the National Parks Service so I thought it was fitting to do this now. So here goes:

I went to Letchworth State Park, in Upstate NY,

Lamberton Conservatory

The voters have spoken and it’s a tie. As the vote for Lamberton came in first, I will post it first. But not to worry, Letchworth will be coming up very soon.

For those of you who are not familiar with Lamberton, it’s a small but very well kept conservatory in Rochester, NY. They’ve got a great variety of tropical plants like orchids and bougainvillea.

Recipe for White Chocolate and Rhubarb Mini Loaves

When I made the rhubarb bars, I had nearly half the bundle of rhubarb left over. I’d owed baked goods to some people and figured I’d use up the rhubarb, because who doesn’t like rhubarb? I always like giving away mini loaf cakes: they are easily transportable, a good size, yummy, and easily modified to work with nearly any flavor combination.

Baby Blanket

I’d like to start by apologizing for not writing for (according to my WordPress home page) 23 days. I recently moved down to NYC. In the chaos of packing and unpacking, I’ve had very little to say that didn’t go something like this: “darn it, I have to run to Lowes again!” Not to mention getting settled in my new apartment and running errands (like going to Lowes) when heat index hasn’t dropped below 90 in a over week is exhausting.

The finished quilt. (I don’t know what happened with the color of this photo when I uploaded it, it was perfect in iphoto. Ah well, I guess that’s what happens when you shrink the file size drastically so the upload is easy.)