Getting my veggies in

One of the first things I cooked after moving is this sorta-stew, sorta-sauce of tomatoes, zucchini, onions, garlic, and pinto beans. Basically, I sauteed onions and garlic in olive oil, added diced zucchini, added a can of chopped tomatoes and a small can of tomato paste, added a can of pinto beans, and simmered the whole thing on low for a while, stirring occasionally until it got thick. Call it the half-fresh, half-canned style of cooking.

I ended up eating this stew/sauce ladled over various pasta shapes, spooned on top of biscuits, spread between flour tortillas for quesadillas, and layered on top of toast covered with melted provolone. And that was one of the first lessons of cooking for myself in graduate school: those huge pots of food I was used to making? Well, unless I was cooking for a potluck, I better start scaling down, unless I wanted to eat the same thing for an entire week straight. Lucky for me, this concoction froze beautifully.