Lighter Pasta with Vegetable Sauce

Lighter than what?  Who knows?  But I think it means the sauce is lighter than a standard tomato sauce.

Here's what it looked like in real life:

Beautiful!  Except for, you know, the labels all over it.  I'm not really sure who to credit for this.  The watermark says "Photo by Carl Tremblay."  It's definitely the official America's Test Kitchen photo.  I know this because it's the same photo that's in my cookbook.  

Here's what our pictures looked like:

Shadowy, blurry...oh yeah, I'm awesome.  First, fix the blurry.  No more phone pics.  Use the tripod.  Yeah, I have one of those.  Second, I was going to say fix the lighting, but the "enhance" button in iPhoto mostly fixed that problem.  

The recipe itself turned out to be pretty good.  It's a nice veggie pasta when you're not too hungry.  But!   It involved browning zucchini in the pan, then transferring to a bowl whose sole purpose in this recipe is to hold the cooked zucchini, and browning more veggies in the pan.  I'm against extra dirty dishes.  

Here's what needs to happen:

Just skip the zucchini.  Save time and dishes.  Plus, the recipe only calls for half a zucchini.  What are you going to do with the other half?  

Double the noodles, because noodles are awesome.  

Remember to add the basil.

Note: Fresh basil is awesome.  The so-called "living herb" basil that comes with its own little clod of dirt is not awesome.  I got some once and it was mostly dead after two days.  I swear I followed the directions and watered it correctly, but alas.  Someday we'll have a magic garden (magic because it will have to garden itself) and grow herbs and peppers and other delicious gardeny vegetables.  

Here's the brilliant plan for the left over half zucchini, half red pepper, and half onion:  Nachos!  

What:  Lighter Pasta with Garden Vegetable Sauce

Results: Pretty good

Where: America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2009

PS - This is similar to another veggie pasta thing I do where I cook whatever vegetables are around in a mixture of butter and olive oil and then mix it up with noodles.  Yummy!  The biggest difference is that this recipe adds tomato paste (and no butter), which makes it *taste* healthier, but I do *really* like the tomato paste-less version a lot.