This one is hands down the favorite in the house! We're always trying to find recipes that are
a little healthier than the traditional alternative and have vegetables and herbs for our kids to
get excited about. This pasta has the added bonus of being incredibly easy to make – and you
can have dinner on the table in 15 minutes flat! My daughter has always been an adventurous eater. (Keeping her out the parmesan during the cooking process is the only real challenge.) However, my son should just carry a sign around that says, “If it isn’t a chicken nugget I won’t eat it!” Well, even he gets excited about this one, and wants to help pick the basil!

Ingredients
1 bunch fresh basil
1-2 garlic cloves (Careful – these are raw so super pungent - and if you over do it you will have a super spicy pasta on your hands!)
¼ cup olive oil
1/3 cup grated parmesan (or as much as you want!)
2 avocados
Juice of ½ Lemon
Salt & Pepper to taste
1 - 16 OZ bag of spiral macaroni pasta

Directions
 Cook the pasta according to the package.
 While the pasta is cooking, mix all the other ingredients into a food processor and blend.
 Drain the pasta, then mix in the sauce.
 Garnish as needed with basil leaves and parmesan.

​Enjoy!

The Fridge Clearing Special!
 
We always buy too many beautiful vegetables!  Thinking we are going to eat SUPER healthy that week, so we stock up on everything that looks wonderful in the organic vege isle.  What always happens is life gets in the way of cooking some nights, then later in the week we have ourselves a vegetable crisis!  Every time we open the fridge the vegetables stare at us, begging to get eaten before they go bad.
 
It is all very stressful.
 
Until now!

We found a great recipe from our friend Onna that helped us, in one beautiful and delicious dish, use ALL our vegetables!  And we did it thanks to the super hero of all spice mixtures – curry!
 
This Thai Curry dish is super easy to make, and goes great with any flavored or plain rice you have in your cupboard.  We used a basil-chili rice for the adults, and good old-fashioned Basmati for the kids.  We tapped our box (shhh!) of California pinot grigio, and turned a Friday night into a Thai adventure.
 
We make this with two cast iron pots – one for the curry and one for the vegetables.  Meat eaters can throw anything in here also and it would be just as great.  The recipe below is all of the vegetables we had on hand, but literally any vegetable would taste great in this mixture.  Making it separately also allows the non-fans of the curry to have the charred veges with whatever sauce they want (which helped with our kids since we went with a spicier curry).
 
Ingredients
 
Curry Mixture

• One yellow onion
• 3 garlic cloves (because garlic is awesome)
• Fresh ginger (a thumb size portion)
• 1 can of coconut milk (I think the full fat is the way to go on this – for crying out loud you are eating a vegetable dish - live a little!)
• Rice – whatever kind you want
• Thai Kitchen brand curry paste – we mixed a spoonful of the red and green curries, but you can use whatever you want, they are both amazing

 
Vegetables

• Olive oil
• One onion (not needed but you can never have enough onions)
• Orange and yellow peppers
• Asparagus
• Green beans

 
Directions

• Diced up the onion, garlic and ginger and sauté in the deep cast iron pot with some olive oil until the onions are translucent and start breaking down (4 minutes)
• Add the coconut milk and turn the stove down to a simmer and let it cook for a long time (like 25-30 minutes) stirring occasionally.  You whole house will fill up with the delicious aroma!
• If you want, you can blend the curry sauce with a hand blender – but it really does not matter.
• While the curry is cooking heat up a cast iron skillet on high with a tablespoon of olive oil.  Chop all the vegetables and cook on high so that they are cooked through and charred a bit for flavor.
• Cook the rice according to the package

 
Combine and enjoy!  One thing to add (if you have it around) would be some fresh cilatrno or a squeeze of lime juice.  The leftovers of this dish the next day, in my opinion, are even better than the original – so go ahead and cook all those veges in your fridge now and have lunch ready tomorrow!