Rigatoni With Roasted Vegetables

I was in a time crunch after painting all day AND I forgot to take something out for dinner.  What was I going to make.  Pasta is always a good choice, it's fast, easy and you can do so many things with it.  I had a whole refrigerator full of fresh vegetables so I used them up and made this fantastic roasted veggie mix for the pasta.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Get a large pot of salted water going on the stove for the pasta.  I used red and yellow grape tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini,  a red onion and red and green peppers.  I left the tomatoes whole, cut the squash and the zucchini in half and slice into 1/2 inch slices, quarter the red onion then cut in half, cut peppers into small chunks.  Put all the veggies on a large baking sheet, add two tablespoons of fresh minced garlic, two tablespoons of fresh sliced basil, 2 teaspoons of  fresh thyme, 2 teaspoons of kosher salt, 1 teaspoon of fresh cracked pepper and  drizzle on 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Toss it all together, into the oven and bake for 20 minutes.  When water is boiling, add pasta and stir.

Take out, stir them up and return to oven for another 20 minutes. They should be slightly browned and caramelized at this point.  Remove from oven.    

 Toss those scrumptious veggies with your drained pasta and serve with fresh grated Locatelli cheese. Good fast food, that's good for you!

Quick And Easy Shrimp Stir Fry

What an awful day shoveling snow!  My driveway is about an 1/8 of a mile long, and then the parking area of the driveway is 3 cars wide!  Uggggh! I hate the snow, it needs to move along and leave us alone.  I am beginning to think I live in Alaska, enough already.  After helping to shovel the thick, white, fluffy, heavy, about 1 inch of ice underneath snow, my hubby was running the big snowblower, the boys were cleaning off the cars and shoveling too, I had to cook dinner.  I needed something fast for for hungry mouths.  Freezer and pantry time!  What's in there to cook?  After browsing around - Shrimp Stir Fry.  This is how I made it.

I found this frozen bag of Stir Fry Veggies that I got at Costco.  Stir Fried them up in a little Sesame Oil.

 Found some frozen shrimp, ran them under warm water to semi-thaw them.  Sprayed another fry pan with cooking spray and while the veggies were cooking, I got my seasoned with pepper shrimp started.  Then I got the water boiling for the Basmati rice, oooh that rice is good!

 Combined my cooked shrimp with the veggies and poured about 1/2 cup of this great tasting sauce over all and simmered it.

 Sprinkled on some sesame seeds and plated up my rice.  It's as white as the snow outside!

My dinner, all done in about 1/2 hour, and enjoyed by all the hungry mouths I had to feed.  It was delicious.