I feel my cooking mojo coming back. After the nausea of the first trimester which lingered into the beginning of the second with stomach-turning sensitivity to delicious smells like garlic and onions and then just plain exhaustion for a couple weeks (There's all sorts of crazy stuff going on in there like the formation of extruding ears! I think if your body is producing a brand new pair of ears, you deserve to sit on the couch and order takeout.), I am now ready to return to the kitchen, and for more than just inoffensive sweet stuff.
Just last Saturday, I sauteed onions, and then I did it again on Sunday. Last night I toasted garlic to make this pasta for dinner. By the way, when I'm making a really simple pasta like that, the sort that usually calls for parmesan cheese, I mix in a bit of the salty pasta water and a scoop or two of nutritional yeast to give the minimal sauce a bit of body and nutritional heft. And of course, taste for salt, because that parmesan you left out is salty. And then it's nice to serve your pasta with a wedge of lemon if you have it laying around. It looks pretty and gives a simple dish like this that little something it might be missing.
I always enjoy Mark Bittman's Minimalist column (and Desmond's a fan of his short cooking videos) for simple meal ideas, but lately they've been particularly vegan-friendly or at least easily adaptable. Plus, his quick and creative recipes are a really good way to motivate my big fat teetering baby steps towards the stove.
