Green Spaghetti

(from my old blog...)

When I was a kid my mother would make spaghetti with just butter and chopped parsley sometimes. She (and we) called it "green spaghetti."

I'm not a huge fan of parsley, but we are growing it anyway. (Just like I'm not a huge fan of broccoli, but we grew some of that too this year...thank you, John.)

Anyway, the parsley is doing very well, so I suggested making green spaghetti tonight. We have left over whole wheat spaghetti in the fridge, so it would take very little time to prepare. Bill went out and harvested parsley...and some basil...some chives...and the last little florets of broccoli. He roughly chopped all the green stuff, and threw in some chopped olives and some capers....(hmmm...this is no longer the original green spaghetti...and I had very little to do with the creation of this dish as well...oh well...I was giving Alex a bath.)

I heated some olive oil in a pan, tossed in all the chopped ingredients, and just basically warmed them slowly in the oil. Sprinkled that with some salt and pepper, and warmed up the spaghetti in a ziploc bag in the microwave. There was a little bit of spaghetti sauce on the spaghetti, too, so there was that little tomato element thrown into the final dish. When the spaghetti was warmed up I put that in the pot with the greens and oil, tossed them all together, and we served it with some grated parmigan. Alex shoved handfuls of it into his mouth. He likes everything. He eats his veggies without a complaint. (He likes sauteed chicken livers too, with a little onion, served over some couscous mixed with diced tomato, basil and olive oil...honest!)

Anyway, dinner was very nice, very quick, very simple. I love having the garden. Bill is the gardener, as he has more time in the summer than I do...and he likes to do it. He is, in this respect, his mother's son. Which works for me. I'm looking forward to later this summer, when the "bigger" things start coming in...eggplant, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers...different kinds of salad greens...herbs...the peas are just about finished, now that the hot weather has arrived...oh, and we have asparagus...horseradish...raspberry plants that were Bill's mom's...not a bad little farm this year.

I look forward to fresh tomatoes, sliced, with slices of fresh mozzarella, mixed with fresh basil and olive oil and a little salt....or fresh eggplant and zucchini on the grill...a thick sliced tomato sandwich with mayo and a pinch of salt. That is the flavor of summer to me.