Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes

Happy Monday!

Wow.  How annoying was that?  Well, it is a happy Monday for me, because I made (and ate) this awesomely simple and delicious pasta for supper tonight.

A friend of mine called me tthis afternoon, while I was still debating what I wanted to fix for dinner.  It’s pretty warm out, and I was running a little late, so I wanted something simple and quick.  So, anyway, we were chatting, catching up a bit, and he said one of the reasons he called was to tell me about the delicious pasta meal he had thrown together a few days ago.  He had some good, ripe tomatoes and some fresh italian flat leaf parsley.  So he chopped them up into a bowl with some salt, pepper and a few other things (I will get to that one completely at a later date when I have the fresh herbs).  I made something similar a while back, but my husband is of the belief that if it isn’t spicy enough to jump up and bite you, it’s bland.  Too bad, cuz we had something like that tonight.  Since I didn’t have all the fresh herbs to make the version my friend spoke of, I initially gave up the idea, until I remembered I had a store-bought jar of good basil pesto.  Hmmmm….that would be even quicker to make, and I do love basil….

On a side note, if you’ve never tried any of the purchased basil pesto, it can be a life saver (just get a good quality).  I keep a jar around all the time.  Spaghetti sauce need a little help?  Throw in a spoon of pesto.  It’ll wake your sauce up.  You can use it for sandwich spread, pizza sauce, the list goes on.

SO, back to the pasta.  You’ll need about a pound of fresh RIPE tomatoes for every 8-12 ounces of pasta, depending on how much tomato you like.  It’s not critical, use as much as you like just make sure your tomatoes aren’t those hard orange things.  Since the tomatoes are not actually getting cooked, they need to be good and ripe.  Some good olive oil and some pesto sauce (garlic’s already in it – yay!).  Obviously, you could use your own homemade pesto, but we’re talking quick and easy here.   As in, you get home from work, everyone is hungry, and you are hot and tired.  This is 30 minutes or less.  Once you chop your tomatoes and stir all the ingredients together, it’s just a matter of boiling the water and cooking the pasta.  Toss in a salad, garlic bread – voila!  Dinner.  Or you could skip the salad and/or garlic bread and just have a good glass of wine with it….

What could be easier?  Well, okay, takeout pizza might be easier, but this is homemade and A LOT cheaper than pizza.  And it’s better for you.  Oh yeah, BONUS!!!  Leftovers are really good cold right out of the fridge.  Like a pasta salad!   Take it in your lunch the next day!

There is no meat in this, but if you want to add some cooked chicken or shrimp, that would be delicious as well.  And if you have a person who thinks they have to have heat in everything, hand them the bottle of red pepper flakes.