Those of you who have been around here awhile – or scoping out my Instagram feed – know I am a total Instant Pot devotee. From the weekend it arrived in our home, it has become an instant (if you’ll pardon the pun) member of the family, on par with my beloved Crock-Pot in terms of usage and fidelity.

Now, one thing you’ll find about looking for recipes online is that so very many of them – of the comfort food variety, anyway – are meat-based. But no matter! Vegifying meat recipes is my specialty, and creating plant-based meals out of well-known comfort foods warms my cold little heart. Naturally, pasta and meatballs fits the bill beautifully.

I’m using penne pasta in this recipe because it’s short and squatty and fits great in a pressure cooker without a lot of jamming things in. Other pasta shapes that I’ve had success with are rigatoni, bowtie pasta and shells, but really the sky’s the limit!

The putting-together couldn’t be simpler. Simply put some frozen vegetarian meatballs in the bottom of your pressure cooker, top with about three cups of water, then pour in a box of pasta, top with canned sliced mushrooms and finish the whole thing off with a jar of your favorite pasta sauce. Set the pressure cooker to 6 minutes on high and let ’er rip!

The end result is so good, your family will think you’ve been sweating away at the stove for an hour. The penne ends up perfectly al dente, the meatballs cooked through till they’re tender, and once stirred up the sauce melds beautifully with the rest of the dish! Top with your favorite cheese and you’ve got a meal worthy of celebration. 

I’ve written about this recipe before, and it never fails to disappoint. (The recipe, that is, not necessarily the writing.) And though I call this dish “Springtime Linguine” for the purposes of the blog, I actually call it “Erin Linguine” at home, because it was my friend Erin who first made this dish for LeeLee and me about 100 years ago. It has aged well – sometimes better than LeeLee and me (but don’t tell him I said so)!

At any rate, on Thursday night I was craving something carby but fresh, and when that combination comes across my radar, I know that this linguine dish will settle the score. So after I got home from work and caught up on some “General Hospital” (don’t judge!) while LeeLee was at a meeting, I rolled up my sleeves and hopped into the kitchen.

The prep work for this dish is a cinch: Boil some water, add the linguine, and as the pasta cooks, sauté your vegetables. You can use whatever you’ve got on hand – our cast of characters changes with the months – but this time we used onion, yellow squash, sliced mushrooms, a handful or two of frozen peas and cherry tomatoes, each added in turn, beginning with the onion and finishing with the tomatoes. I was liberal with the olive oil, since it was really the binder for the whole dish, and heavy-handed with the black pepper (I tried to pump the brakes on the salt).

Once the veggies had softened up nicely (and, incidentally, the cherry tomatoes became balls of molten lava, which we would learn upon eating the meal), I added the linguine to the pan one or two scoops at a time, tossing everything around to let the olive oil soak into every strand of pasta. Then we piled our plates high, garnishing them with some fresh herbs and vegan parmesan and, for me, some nutritional yeast as well. Because everything is better with nutritional yeast!

As usual, we mowed down our meals and went back for seconds, and as usual, this linguine was so satisfying and so hearty that even after we joined the Clean Plate Club, we still had tons left for lunches. Erin Linguine comes to the rescue again!

:)

Friends, the past couple of weeks have been Big Fun, but Big-Time Hectic as well! From a trip home to visit family to watching my Ironman training plan ramp up-up-up, I’ve been enjoying every moment, but I’ve certainly missed y’all. And I’m happy to be back updating these pages!

As training has begun to take more and more of my time, I’ve found myself looking for meals that are both filling (read: carby) and easy to put together on a moment’s notice. Tonight’s linguine certainly fit the bill!

I first enjoyed this recipe nearly 15 years ago, when LeeLee and I went to our friend Erin’s home for dinner and she made us a pasta dish much like tonight’s. (Incidentally, as I was cooking tonight, I asked LeeLee, “Remember how we went to Erin’s apartment after she moved back to town and she made us dinner? Remember this linguine?” He replied, “I remember going to her apartment that night, but I don’t recall the linguine.” HOW CAN HE NOT RECALL THE LINGUINE? But I digress.) The dish was genius in its simplicity: In a pan, sauté olive oil, diced onion, zucchini, a couple of cloves of minced garlic, salt, pepper, and plenty of cherry tomatoes while your pasta cooks in a separate pot. Erin’s version may also have had summer squash – even I admit I am a little foggy on that part – but the beauty of this dish is, the veggies are easy to swap in and out. Over the years, we’ve added mushrooms, asparagus, peas, and kale with no ill effects!

Tonight, I also added a package of Gardein chik’n in order to work in a little extra protein, as well as adding in some fresh basil, oregano, and chives from the garden. Once the linguine was cooked, I tossed it into the pan with the veggies and chik’n, mixed everything around thoroughly, and we were ready to eat!

I topped my pasta with some vegan mozzarella shreds, plus some nutritional yeast because that’s what I do. LeeLee went the more purist route, adding only a little extra salt and pepper. We both mowed down two servings apiece and were just tickled pink that we’ve got plenty left for lunches tomorrow!

I’ll always be thankful to Erin for turning me on to this dinner! It’s certainly served us well over the years.

:)

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret regarding the inner-workings of this meal: I made it last night and put it straight in the fridge for today! Sure, it was a bit of a pain to haul myself back off the sofa once I’d gotten good and comfortable last night, after already making yesterday’s dinner, but I knew that time was short this evening after work and before LeeLee’s nighttime meeting, and I just could not abide by picking up takeout just because of my laziness.

So I crawled off the sofa and into the kitchen to create a new-to-me meal: American Tetrazzini from the Make-Ahead Vegan Cookbook by Ginny Kay McMeans. This dish has it all – a creamy sauce with a cashew base (who knew, right?), blended with spaghetti and baked for a half an hour. AND you can make it ahead of time and store it in the fridge or freezer! Which is exactly what we found ourselves doing at 9 p.m. last night, and let me tell you, though I groused a little about it at the time, I couldn’t have been happier today when I got home from work and immediately put dinner in the oven before corralling the cat for her nightly fluid treatment. (Which went better than last night, I might add! One stick, three minutes of drip-bagging, and it was over!)

Anyway. When I got home tonight, I simply pulled the pasta out of the fridge, dumped it into a lasagna pan, mixed in a can of English peas (because why not) and Gardein chik’n strips (because also why not), covered the pan with foil, and put it in the oven to bake for 25 minutes while LeeLee and I tended to the cat. Turns out we had an extra 22 minutes to kill after our cat-wrangling duties had concluded for the evening, so we sat around listening to Prince songs (may he rest in peace).

After the 25-minute baking time, I pulled off the foil and noted that some of the pasta near the middle of the pan was still a bit tepid, so I baked it for another 7 minutes and voila! Perfect tetrazzini. LeeLee and I mowed down two servings apiece and were thrilled to note that there’s still plenty left for tomorrow! The make-ahead meal that keeps on giving!

:)

Now THIS is a keeper!

That was the consensus last night, after LeeLee and I mowed down Round 1 of this meal from the Make-Ahead Vegan Cookbook, a new addition to my ever-growing cookbook collection. I’d worked from home yesterday after taking the Wonder-Cat to the vet – she’s fine – and preparing this once my workday was done was simply a dream!

This cookbook’s author, Ginny Kay McMeans, has a book to sell, so I won’t give away the full recipe here. But let me just say how simple and easy this was to create in just a few steps! And the beauty of this cookbook in general – though I didn’t make sure of this tactic last night – is that once you create the meal, you don’t have to bake it right away. Instead, you can … wait for it … make it ahead of time, just as the name implies! And there’ll be no trouble waiting a couple of days before you bake it.

Now, this recipe calls for Italian sausage, but the Italian Tofurky I’d gotten from the store had – gasp! – already expired by the time I brought it home and I didn’t manage to notice while doing my shopping. But no matter – I pulled out a package of vegan breakfast sausage and used it instead. And the final product was no worse for the wear! In fact, we both really enjoyed the texture of the breakfast variety and I think will use it again on purpose next time.

Now, I say that last night we enjoyed Round 1. That’s because tonight I enjoyed Round 2 while LeeLee was at a dinner meeting (lucky LeeLee!). And it held up wonderfully after a night in the fridge, as pasta tends to do! After each enjoying several servings last night and then a couple tonight, we now only have enough for about one more before the leftovers are gone. So sad! But completely worth it.

This cookbook – and recipe – are definitely keepers. Looking forward to another foray next week!

:)