Monday, April 2, 2012

My 80/20 Rule

Yesterday Tom (TomFoolCookery)made me a ridiculously delicious tamale pie for dinner.



When someone wants to cook me dinner, I don't fight it. I may struggle with some of the ingredients, but I don't fight it. I figure it's all part of my 80/20 rule: 80% of the time I eat good, real, seasonal foods, so the other 20% of the time I don't beat myself up if I go off the path.  And this was a yummy path to venture down.

But with a belly full of canned food, beef and pork sausage (oooh, but my mouth waters thinking about it), today was time to get back to something a little lighter and less....meat-y.
So I tossed some spinach fettucini with kalamata olives, toasted walnuts, caramelized onions and a touch  of goat cheese.  I'm not a huge fan of tomato sauces; I'm more of a cream-sauce girl, but that's where the trouble starts (and the waistband tightens), so I've taken to saving a 1/2 cup or so of the starchy pasta water, and stirring it into the pasta mixture with some lemon juice or white wine, and some lemon zest.  Cook it down for a few minutes on medium-high heat, and you'll be surprised at how tasty it is. The little bit of goat cheese satisfies my creamy craving, and I can feel good about eating a healthy bowl of this.

No comments:

Post a Comment