Whew!
We are home from an absolutely fabulous long weekend trip with our almost-five-year-old for his fall break. It is just amazing how airplanes, taxi rides, subways, and sleeping in a hotel can be so thrilling for a little boy. I swear he could have skipped the museums and just used public transportation all weekend and he would have been delighted. What fun to see these things through the eyes of a little one...
I am always truly astounded, though, at how hard it is to eat healthy when traveling. Hats off to folks who travel for work frequently and manage to do it...
Since we just got back, I've not cooked a meal, gone to the grocery store, or done any meal planning in several days. But I do have one dinner idea to share:
You may remember last month I was making Ina Garten's spaghetti and meatballs (heaven in a dutch oven) and doubled the sauce recipe & popped the extra in the freezer. Hello!! Genius!! Wednesday afternoons are soccer practice for us, and I like to do a baked pasta dish that night, because I can put it in the oven before we go, and then walk in the house and supper is ready for us. Last Wednesday I took spinach and mozzarella ravioli (from Costco, in the frozen section - if you have a Costco in your town and are not getting this ravioli on a regular basis, honey, you are missing out!), dumped it into one of my pyrex baking dishes, topped it with the homemade marina sauce, sprinkled with a generous handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese, covered with a lid, and baked at 350 for 50 minutes (remember, "delay start" on your oven is truly your BFF).
Oh. My. Goodness. So delicious. The sauce, since it was made with the brown bits of the meatballs, had a wonderful meaty taste to it and was perfect with the spinach in the ravioli. And bonus points: with the tomatoes in the sauce and the spinach in the ravioli, no separate vegetable needed to be prepared. A true one pot meal and will be making the regular rotation.
Happy eating!
