It's not all about the pasta

So why do people think they need it?

When I began making better choices about the food I fuel my body with, pasta very quickly came under fire as a poor choice for me. It left me feeling icky, was calorie laden without a lot of nutritional value and didn’t offer positives to counterbalance those negatives.

An interesting ‘ah ha’ moment happened when I was talking to someone about my considering giving up pasta. Ohhhhhhhh, noooooooooo, they lamented as though I’d said I was going to give up air or sleep. You can’t do THAT! And they began to wax poetic about how fabulous pasta was. What they didn’t realize, or at least I don’t believe they realized it…was in their monologue they never actually mentioned pasta. They talked about sauces and meats and cheeses and seasonings and various garlic methods and even a bit of bread…but pasta never once left their lips! It was a 100 watt bulb that went off for me and I’ve appreciated it for almost two years now!

I started preparing a number of my long standing Italian dishes without the pasta. My husband, who was also on a journey to be his healthy best, was fully in agreement to see what I could create that was a pasta free, pasta dish. A bit of an oxymoron, but much of what these dishes are named, have pasta as a featured part of that. Lasagne for example.

So I make Mockzanya.

Sausage, beef, chicken, clam, vegetable—they are all still things I layer with mozzarella, sauce and ricotta but no pasta.  Guess what I don’t miss at all? Guess what relatively few people have ever mentioned missing when they have been served that? And one person even remarked it was a less heavy feeling lasagna than they had eaten in the past. BINGO!

Macaroni and cheese was tougher, to be sure. I mean you can’t really serve just cheese sauce, though there are days that option does sound lovely. But by taking the time to cut up cauliflower into tiny florets and then parboiling it before mixing it with the cheese mixture and baking it in the oven resulted in a really excellent mock mac and cheese. I found that I used a bit more garlic, nutmeg and high quality cheeses to craft the base for this dish than I did when I used elbow macaroni. I also find that it is less enjoyable stove top, one that really needs to be baked, get that amazing crust and have the extra cooking time for the cauliflower to be just right. If my husband is not eating it, I will add a layer of diced tomatoes on top before baking it and then sprinkle cheese on that to achieve the delightful crust, but as he is anti-tomato unless it is whirred into a spaghetti or pizza sauce, that is not a choice when he’s eating with me.

I know I've written about this previously, but conversations I've had recently have led me to renew this subject. I encourage you to make a dish you normally put pasta in without and let me know what you thought!