Quick Dinners

After three weeks of intense dissertation work we are getting ready to go on vacation. In terms of dinners that usually involves looking in the fridge, pantry, and freezer to see what I can cobble together and use up before we go. Tonight it was, once again, the "tuna casserole for the 21st century." I mixed it up a little bit by adding a can of artichoke hearts.

Interestingly, we had tons of leftovers; not because it wasn't good, but because the tuna, caper, artichokes was a lot heartier than I anticipated. I always, always, weigh out the pasta before cooking, because if there is anything I dislike it is a plethora of pasta and a dearth of sauce. (And yes, I actually use a scale to weigh it out.*) Each person gets 2 oz. of dried pasta, which cooks up to, as little j likes to quip, "more than you'd think." So I was surprised to see how much was left over since I didn't cook more pasta than usual.

In any case, it was delicious and a nice change with the artichokes -- I'll have to remember to keep a couple cans as a pantry staple.

*I highly recommend acquiring a digital kitchen scale. It's useful in all forms of cooking, but particularly in baking. If you have a recipe that lists the weight of your dry ingredients it will be much more accurate to weight them out than use the standard measurements. And, honestly, I think it is a little less work, even though it seems a little more anal.