Penne and Veggies with Rosemary Garlic White Sauce

The Rosemary and Garlic White Sauce is taken from this Cooking Light recipe. (I made the Roasted Butternut Squash Lasagna, btw. It was very tasty, but had a uniformly squishy texture. The tastiness came primarily from the sauce, so I figured that the sauce was repeatable, but the whole casserole was not.)

Call this mac'n'cheese for grown-ups. Sans cheese. Unless you add Parmesan to everything, like I do. And with appeal to kids, 'cause my two gobbled it up. Okay, call it refined mac'n'cheese. Or just call it yummy. :D

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica

Oodles of Gingery Noodles: Vegetarian Times

Actually, I think this is misnamed: this recipe tastes a lot more of hoisin sauce than it does of ginger.

Not that that's a bad thing. Hoisin sauce isn't a bad taste. But it is a strong one, and it drowns out a lot of the other tastes in this dish. Except, surprisingly, the taste of tofu. That might sound dubious too, but as the recipe has you fry the tofu till it's golden-brown and toasty, the taste of tofu is much like the taste of nice, slightly soggy Chicken McNuggets.

Hmm. I haven't made this sound terribly appetizing yet, have I? Okay, one last try: if I got this at a corner Chinese restaurant, I wouldn't carry away any strong memory of it, but I wouldn't feel ripped off either. In fact, I'd probably think I'd gotten a remarkably non-greasy, passable and enjoyable dish, made with rather good pasta.

peaced of Christ to you,
Jessica

alterations:
-asparagus instead of watercress, because it was amazingly cheaper at the ranch market.
-fettucine instead of somen because Trader Joe's was inexplicably out of Asian noodles. How does that happen? Did they move them and just not tell me? And how could they, when there's nowhere else, that I know of, that carries green tea noodles?