Food Experiment

Last night, I tried a little food experiment on my family. Usually whenever I make a pasta dish, I make a full pound of pasta, and then mix in whatever veggies, sauce, cheese etc.

Well, I bought a 10 ounce box of whole wheat bow tie pasta at the grocery store last week. That's a full six ounces less of starch.

Every summer I make a pasta sauce that my family always calls "caponata." I wish I could give you a recipe, but it's one of those things were there is no actual recipe. Essentially, you go out into the garden and pick whatever zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes and peppers you have. You then go into the house and chop up all those vegetables and throw them into a large baking dish with chopped onions and garlic. You then add a bit of olive oil, wine or balsamic vinegar, olives, capers, salt and pepper. Mix and bake for a couple of hours until the whole mass is cooked down and not watery. At this point you can toss the caponata with pasta (although if you chop everything fine enough you can also serve it as an appetizer on bread), and toss in some fresh, chopped parsley or basil (or both). The caponata also keeps for a few days in the refrigerator, or you can freeze it for a month or so.

Well last night I made twice as much of the caponata as I usually do and tossed it with the 10 ounces of pasta. No one noticed that there was six ounces less pasta and twice as much veggies.

Less starch/more veggies. Now that has got to be a good thing.