Not So Easy Pasta

I wish I was clever enough to come up with easy-to-make recipes, like Rachel Ray, but I can't. I can, however, download recipes from Pioneer Woman and make them in my kitchen. And take photos of said attempts. And post them so you'll be inspired to make something yummy as well.

So, why can't I make my own recipes? I think Steve doesn't trust my judgement.

At the grocery store I'm always on the lookout for discounted vegetables because they're ready to spoil. Especially the bell peppers. And the zucchini. You can cut off the bad parts and still use them for stuff like pasta, and zucchini bread.
This week I found 5 red bell peppers for 99 cents, because they looked wilted.

This is what I did.

I took them out into the 115 degree heat and roasted them on the grill.


Mmmmm...roasty....



Then I put them in a ziploc bag for about a 1/2 hour so they could steam....



I left them outside for this so they wouldn't cool off too quickly in the house. I wanted those suckers cooked really good.

While they steamed outside, I chopped up a sweet onion and sauteed it with some garlic in butter. And I had a beer.


Then I peeled the skins off, and placed them in the blender. Gotta be sure to get the guts removed, otherwise you'll be chomping on seeds.



Only blending for about 45 seconds, before pouring them into the pan with the onions and garlic. At the same time, I'm boiling the cute little bowtie pasta.



And just for shits and gigs (okay, name THAT movie) I added a little cream to the sauce to give it some body. I also put about 1/2 a tablespoon of of oregano, and a teaspoon of pepper in there.



Since we LOOOOOVE our vegetables, we each had a heaping pile of snowpeas with our pasta. And since we LOOOOVE our cheese, we sprinkled parmesan.



I started this little project at 4:30, and we began eating at 6:00. It took 10 minutes to eat. Yeah, effective use of time.