What is your favorite meal? It is great to have a favorite meal, I think. For me, my favorite meal changes from time to time – often depending on the season. One aspect of having a go to meal is you know the ingredients off the top of your head – or you know 95% of the ingredients! Before we go into what I made for dinner tonight, let’s do a brief re-cap of the day…

Today I had a scheduled day off from work. Yesterday I went to Connecticut for a family dinner with Mark and his clan… it was quite fun, with about 20 – 25 people 😀 fun was had by all!

Today I left Connecticut at 1:30. I drove straight to the gym. I was not really feeling a run, but I did not have much of a choice. I have signed up for a 5k on Sunday, and I am really wondering why I signed up to run 3.1 miles outside in February. What was I thinking!?

Sooo, today I did 2.25 miles on the treadmill. I could not make myself do more. I was bored and not feeling it. But it was definitely better then not doing anything. I was glad to get myself moving. I had a lot of stuff on my mind, mostly the laundry, groceries and food I wanted to accomplish before bed time!

I got to the market at 4 o’clock (where had my day off gone!?) and I made myself a budget. I had to get out of East Side Market spending $30 or less. If you have shopped at East Side Market, you might know that this is a bit of a challenge 🙂   

In my head, I knew that I wanted to make pasta fagioli and that I needed some veggies, etc. for lunches this week. I quickly maneuvered through the store picking up produce as I went…

a package of spinach

a cucumber

package of grape tomatoes

garlic

one onion

two cans of cannellini beans

two cans of tomatoes

one box of vegetable broth

So, there might have been another thing or two that I made it home with (but I can’t remember!) but I spent $17 and I had almost everything I needed! I was lucky that I had pasta for the soup and a few Greek yogurts to pack with lunch this week.

When I got home I ran over to my cherished Bittman cookbook to see if I had forgotten an ingredient… I was pretty impressed, I had only forgotten the parsley, which is too bad because the soup is amazing with it – but it is still wonderful without it.

I quickly gathered all of my laundry and got it started. Then I started chopping the onions, garlic, and prepping the other ingredients. I used my mortar pestle to crush my dried rosemary – it worked like a dream!

Here is the final product:

Seriously!? It was sooo good. I am so excited to have leftovers for a few days this week. Here is a hint, if you make the soup one day: if you are going to use the soup for a couple of days, I suggest leaving the pasta separate from the rest of the soup mixture. The pasta can get soggy after a day or two.

OK – I am off! Hope you are all having a good Monday and that your week is off to a great start.

😀