Creative Juices

Beans And Greens: A Recipe

I like to take a couple of recipes and combine them.  I find I do this often because I can't decide on just one, so I take a little from one recipe and a little from a second recipe and combine them into a new recipe.

This pasta dish was absolutely delicious and healthy and SO GOOD.  Now, to be fair I can't say that my children were as bowled over as I was about this dinner...but, they all ate it and liked it (I kept raving and they were like, "mom, it is good..." but I thought it deserved a GREAT) and Jennifer was the only one who had a problem with the beans, but she ate them (I insisted).

BEANS AND GREENS WITH PASTA

1 lb. pasta
1 TBL. olive oil
1/2 onion, thinly sliced in half moons
1/2 tsp. dried sage
1/2 tsp. dried oregano
1/4 tsp. dried thyme
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 cup chicken stock
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 cup canned chopped tomatoes
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 bunch kale, cooked with a little bit of oil and garlic cloves

1.  Cook kale with garlic and oil and set aside.
2.  Cook pasta according to package.
3.  In medium nonstick skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat.  Add onion and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until they begin to soften, 3 to 4 minutes.  Add sage, oregano, thyme, salt, pepper, and stock.  Reduce heat to medium, and simmer 10 minutes.  Add zucchini and tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until zucchini is tender, 7 to 8 minutes.  Add the beans, and cook,
stirring occasionally, 3 minutes more. 
4.  Remove from heat and toss hot pasta, bean mixture, and cooked kale.  Serve with Parmesan cheese and garlic bread.

Book Club Update

For those of you following our ABC book club I apologize for such an unsteady year of reading.  I myself have had a terrible second half of reading.  I guess I could chalk it up to moving our family back across the country for the second time in a year and the stresses involved with having my husband still working on the east coast.

I say that and yet I KNOW that reading does me SO WELL.  I love to escape.  I love to delve into a book and watch the minutes tick away.  I love to explore authors and stories and exciting plots.  I love the relaxation involved with reading.  And I especially LOVE finding a gem of a good book to entertain myself for hours and hours.

However, life has had different ideas for the past six months.  I know we took the summer off from our book club, which I hope not to do in 2011, and it appears we have taken autumn off as well.

The first part of the year I seemed to be devouring books at rapid speed and then by May it almost all came to a screeching halt.  As a result, the book club has suffered too.  Sometimes, for me, I need to get my momentum kick started (am I the only one with this problem?) by reading several books one after another that I can almost guarantee will be good reads.  The lack of being able to get involved in reading (even though from late August until early October I sat by and watched my mother read book after book after book!) has had a negative effect on October's (and November) book club selection.

Classics are not always the easiest books to delve into and because I have been fairly removed from books for months I found myself completely and unmotivated to pick up One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

I hold my head in shame.

I walked by my copy of the book, which sat patiently on my living room coffee table, day after day, week after week, and now month after month.  I brought it with me in the car.  I carried it to my bedroom at night.  I placed it on the end table in the family room for some early evening reading.

Nothing.  I opened the first page, read a few lines, a couple of pages and while it was NOT difficult nor boring by any means, I just couldn't get myself to dive in.

So, here is the thing.  If you read the book and would like to share your thoughts, PLEASE DO SO!  I am going to shake off the dust bunnies that have taken over my brain and regroup with our "L" selection beginning in January.  My goal is to let you know the book choice in the next few days so you can get a little head start during any holiday down time.

For me, I have decided to read something that I KNOW will get my juices flowing again...something that will keep me interested and motivated to read and hopefully get back on that horse: Harry Potter book seven.

In the meantime, happy reading everyone!