Originally, the recipe was for Vegan Taco Pasta Shells. While I’m not at all vegetarian, I don’t eat a whole lotta meat so that didn’t present a problem for me – I’m all for adding meatless meals to my cooking repertoire. And then I read the words: vegan sour cream.

Uh… I’ll go meatless, but, y’know… there are limits.

(I’m not judging – vegan, not vegan, whatever. Whatever you choose to eat is for you to worry about. I just couldn’t do vegan sour cream or cheese. I LIKE DAIRY.)

So you get some fire roasted tomatoes.

I admit, I made this a few weeks ago. I don’t remember much about the experience.

I left the tomatoes alone even though I hate tomato chunks (Pureed or smushed tomatoes are fine – it’s not the taste of tomatoes, the taste I dig). Some salt.

Nearly everything is better with garlic.

Whoa, big shells. How YOU doin’?

(You know, I love me some pasta. I think I want to start putting more stuff in really big shells.)

Here’s where this recipe totally lost me.

Despite my blatant ignoring of the vegan sour cream and cheese directives, I went ahead and put in the corn just like the recipe said even though I know I don’t like random bits of corn in stuff.

The corn MESSED. THIS. UP.

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t ever help anything to put corn in it.

This could have used less corn and more (non vegan) cheese. The flavor was actually pretty decent.

Damn corn.

Oh, and then I forgot the sour cream.

The end.

There are probably a gazillion ways to make a fruit smoothie and most of them are gonna yield some beautiful deliciousness. I cannot remember why I included this on the list except that I like taking pictures of fruit and maybe when I was making the list I realized that there was a whole lot of sweet stuff on my list (Hi, would you like some cookies with your cookies?).

I used some nonfat vanilla yogurt for sweetness, a splash of skim milk and then ALL OF THE FRUIT.

Pumpkin chose mango and pineapple with a few strawberries tossed in.

I opted for blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry.

THERE WERE SO MANY SEEDS IN MINE.

Perhaps I should have run it through a sieve after or something.

But still?

Delicious.

No. I really have no idea why it made the list. Took five minutes and a blender.

Huh. Oh well.

The biggest enemy of this project is not time – though I don’t have a whole lot of that – but winter. Winter’s early darkness coupled with my unflattering environmentally friendly lightbulbs makes photographing food a pain in the booty if I decide to cook once I get home from work.

Today I tried to beat the sunset.

No go.

In my efforts to beat the darkness, I picked what could very well have been the worst recipe for empanada dough. Most of the recipes were more pastry based, calling for cold cold butter and rolling the whole mess out and letting it chill in the fridge an hour.

BUT I DIDN’T HAVE AN HOUR!

So I chose a recipe from AllRecipes.com which frankly was too sweet (1/3 cup sugar? Gross), too thick, and… not quite right.

Also? A pain to roll out.

I should have used a bigger glass.

Having seen a recipe in O Magazine for empanadas, I was hell bent on a rotisserie chicken and poblano pepper variation. Poblanos look a bit like infinities when you slice ‘em. Pretty.

I chopped up some leftover rotisserie chicken, mixed it with diced poblanos and squished it in the middle of the dough, and crimped it shut with a fork.

Badly lit empanadas are badly lit.

They actually had real potential…with a different dough.

Impatience. It’ll get you ever time.

I haven’t declared the empanada a complete failure but… that dough? Oh. Ew. Gross. NEVER. AGAIN.

Every time I make pasta using sauce from a jar, I chastise myself. It can’t  be that difficult, I think. Plus, can you even pronounce half of the garbage that’s in here? (I’ve taken to buying organic sauce which, yeah, I CAN pronounce the ingredients, but…EVEN SO…)

Pasta sauce is one of those things.

There are very few jarred sauces I like and honestly, I can never remember which ones those are when I go to the store and then I end up buying some garbagey thing that tastes awful and then it just sits in my fridge until it’s so old that the sauce around the rim of the jar is so crusty that I couldn’t take the lid off if I tried.

ANYWAY. That is how pasta sauce ended up on my list (I think I actually wrote “marinara sauce” and I am sure there is some legit difference between marinara and just any old pasta sauce, but I don’t know that difference, and I know what I meant when I wrote the list).

This recipe was pretty darn easy.

(It was also pretty darn boring. Next time? Imma add better stuff)

In a sauce pan, heat up onions and olive oil and salt for about ten minutes (the recipe called for a LOT of olive oil – I reduced it by a lot. I didn’t see the need for so much oil and it seems to have come out okay anyway).

Add two 28-oz cans of San Marzano tomatoes, pureed with their juices.

These are more expensive than just any other whole tomato. And they were in a different section. At my grocery store, there’s a TOMATO section and an AUTHENTIC ITALIAN tomato section. Sooooo… here’s some fancy pants tomatoes. I guess.

Seven basil leaves.

Also: add more salt.

Bring to a bubble on high. Cover and let simmer for about 45 minutes.

In the end, though boring, it was still a win. It’s far too much for me and the girls – I’ve frozen half of the sauce and I’ve packaged up a few separate dishes of pasta and sauce to take to work for lunches this week (I’m going to be so sick of spaghetti). Next time, I’d maybe add more garlic. I keep thinking of elements of things I could add to make this tastier (mmmm pancetta…), but the fact is, I do dig its simplicity, and I do like that if I cut the olive oil down a liiiiiitttttttllllllleeeeee bit further, this is still a relatively healthy sauce and not bogged down by a bunch of junky (and delicious!) extras that make it less healthy.

Short story long, it was a win. The kids liked it. I’ll either halve the recipe next time or just be prepared to freeze in smaller quantities to have sauce on hand…pretty much until the end of time.

Salsa is my favorite condiment.

I could take or leave ketchup. Mustard is a sandwich go-to but sparingly. Mayo is not something I use by choice. But salsa. GLORIOUS SALSA. I could sit down with the jar and a spoon and GO TO TOWN.

Really.

And I dig green salsa too, even though it tends to be a bit spicier and no, it doesn’t really “go” with everything. It’s still good stuff.

You know, I’ve never bought a tomatillo before?

I have no idea if these are good tomatillos. There’s probably a reasonable mechanism for determining the ripeness of a tomatillo. You should google that before you go shopping.

I didn’t.

And shallots.

They hide those suckers at the store. These were on a side of an end cap on a shelf, somewhere near the bottom. In a bag. WAY TO HIDE THE SHALLOTS. That’s okay. I wanted to spend five minutes looking. Honestly, I thought they’d be closer to the onions.

Rude.

So, you’ve got some tomatillos, shallots, cilantro, a jalapeño, green chiles and other stuff (and you know what that other stuff is because UP THERE you clicked the link for the recipe, right? RIGHT). Shove it all in your food processor.

Maybe you chop your stuff into smaller pieces.

I think I made my food processor mad with all these big ol’ veggies.

Pulse, pulse, pulse.

VOILA. Done.

I wasn’t really sure what I’d do with this, but it is amazing served with nachos. Chips, some lovely cheddar and for fun some shredded pork… then dunk in the green salsa.

So full of win.

YUUUUUUUM.