Vegetables = Comfort Food?

Well, in these two recipes, veggies meet comfort food! =) We really enjoyed these this weekend.


Pasta Primavera
Apparently, a signature dish from a world-famous restaurant. I followed the recipe almost exactly, though I sub'd regular tomatoes for the plum and didn't have pine nuts this time around. A few tips from my experience: if you can chop up all the veggies ahead of time, it would make for a fairly quick meal - with the chopping and cooking together, it took maybe 40 minutes to prepare. I used two pans: a medium saute pan for all the sauteeing, and then a large stockpot to cook the spaghetti. At the final step, instead of putting the spaghetti in the saute pan to mix with the cream sauce, I put the cream sauce in the stockpot and mixed everything together in that. Cuts down on a few dishes ;-)

I've never even had asparagus (that I can recall) and have always been rather afraid of it, I guess. It was wonderful in this dish. I don't imagine I'd love it by itself, but in a dish like this, you don't taste any one vegetable flavor over another...they just all blend together in lovely pasta creaminess!


Turkey Cheese Casserole, or, Cheesy Pie (from Healthiest Kid by the Sears)

With this much cheese how can you go wrong? This was perfect for a dinner-breakfast (we had pancakes with it). Might also be good with some bread crumbs...there are lots of breakfast casseroles out there, but I did like that this one used turkey and cream cheese - hadn't seen those two before.

Serves 6-8

1lb ground turkey
3 medium zucchini, chopped
3 green onions, chopped
1 tsp. basil
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
1 tsp. salt (or, to taste)
4 eggs (used local, free-range)
1/3 cup milk (next time I might try cream)
4 oz. cream cheese, cubed
1/2 cup mozzerella, grated
1/2 cup cheddar, grated

Preheat oven to 425. Brown the meat, and season as you cook with 1 tsp. basil and salt/pepper to taste. Cover the bottom of a large pie pan/casserole dish with browned meat. Layer on the zucchini and green onions. Add the Italian seasoning and salt to taste. Whisk the eggs and milk together and pour into the dish. Sprinkle all three cheeses on top. Bake for 30 minutes (mine took about 40 minutes b/c I used a deeper casserole dish).