Quick Tasty Meals - Taco Pasta

About a year or two ago, I created a dish I called taco pasta. I took things I had - ground beef, taco seasoning, canned tomatoes, and ditalini (small , cylindrical pasta). I browned the beef with the taco seasoning, added the rest and done. It was pretty great.

Tonight, however, I decided to step up the health some. Here's to my new Taco Pasta.

Grab a box of whole wheat pasta - I happened to have some rotini lying around. I apparently like to use little or "ini" pastas. Clearly I speak Italian. We also had tacos earlier this week so I already had some seasoned taco meat. After all, there are only two of us and even though L eats a lot, we still don't polish off two pounds of meat in one setting.   Then I had a can of "diced" tomatoes. I put diced in quotes because, if you look at the picture, those are clearly cubed; they're way to large to be diced. To up the health, I added some frozen spinach that I had left over from my Green Monster. Lastly, I threw in a can of chick peas for good measure. (I hope the skimmers appreciate that I put the important stuff in bold. I also hope fellow teachers appreciate it - it is very similar to the highlighting step used for test questions.)

This meal was delish! The seasoning from the taco meat really stood out and didn't fight with the pasta because it was whole wheat. Last time I had wheat pasta I wasn't a fan, but the flavors in this were so strong the pasta was merely the vehicle for everything else. Isn't that the way it should be, anyway? I served it (to myself only, L had a big bowl of mac-n-chese. Boy does he fight my fit efforts.) with a slice of plain rye bread. I say plain because it had no butter - otherwise it is glorious, flavorful, simply awesome slice of Jewish heaven. What a dinner.

I would love to cook with more fresh things but L is rarely an adventurous eater. On the other hand, nights like this I absolutely love to have my cabinets stocked with some canned goods. I can't find the post I thought I wrote, so I will have to tell you another time why crushed/diced/whole canned tomatoes are my favorite to keep around. Clearly it has to do with how many different ways I can use them. AND I DON'T EVEN LIKE TOMATOES! Well, I do, but not raw. Hence the cans.