Thirty minute meal.

This is my idea of a 30-minute meal, minus Rachael Ray cause boy, can she get to a person. Anyway, I whipped up this little creation before settling in to watch Broad Street Bullies, the new HBO documentary (definitely recommend it) about the 1974-1975 Philadelphia Flyers. I’ve never been one for sports team allegiance but I do rather enjoy watching hockey. Though I have to admit, Sunday night’s Flyers versus Canadiens game wasn’t much of a competition.

But I digress. For this supermarket meal, I used DeBoles Organic Angel Hair with Whole Wheat and Flax, a can of Whole Foods 365 diced tomatoes, a 19 oz. can of Progresso Cannellini beans, 2 cups of baby spinach and Morning Star Farms Meal Starters Chik’n Strips.

To prepare the sauce, I sautéed the chik’n strips in olive oil for 2-3 minutes at medium heat, lowered the heat and then added the beans and diced tomatoes. While I was combining these ingredients, I also put a pot of water on for the pasta. After mixing up the chik’n, beans and tomatoes I seasoned the pot with some garlic powder, crushed red pepper and a little salt (but not much, fake meats tend to have a lot of sodium). I brought this to a low simmer, added my spinach on top and put a lid over it. After a few minutes the spinach had wilted and mixed right into the sauce (see picture). Once the angel hair was drained, I added the sauce to the pasta, sprinkled a little grated parmesan over top and presto, dinner was done.

I think tonight I’m going to try out Smitten Kitchen’s adaptation of Rataouille’s Rataouille.

In non-cooking related news, I am juggling three political histories right now, one biography, one autobiography and one narrative history. I will review all of these books once I finish, I just rather enjoy keeping my mind super busy with multiple texts at once, I blame grad school (which I totally miss).

There’s a lot more in the works, the aforementioned recipe zine, upcoming tour of the southeast with my college roommate, a trip to see the fam in Rochester, a weekend in the woods near Albany and of course, the summer at my beloved Jersey Shore.