Chef's Relief

Having cooked all day for my friend, making a veggie lasagna for her freezer and a tarte flambée for supper, when dinner time rolled around, I was less than enthusiastic about cooking.

We talked about going out, but I was too tired to change from my food-spattered outfit. We considered ordering pizza or Chinese, both of which can be delivered to our door, but neither seemed interesting. Finally, My Beloved suggested one of his go-to dishes from when he was briefly a bachelor before I came along, pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese.

That sounded good, plus easy and quick, but his mother's spirit would have haunted me if I had not offered him a green veggie with dinner; Sally was just like my mother about insisting on eating one's vegetables. So, we settled on adding a generous handful of green peas to each serving to pacify the family ghosts.

Capellini takes less time to cook than the water does to boil, so we had dinner on the table in record time. I had softened the butter in a big bowl before hand so I drained the pasta except for a few drips of water, tossed it in the bowl, and added the lightly-cooked peas. At the table, we each grated the right amount of cheese over the pasta and tossed again with pepper.

We thought all we'd need was the four P's for dinner - pasta, Parm, peas and pepper, but it wasn't until we added the S word, salt, to the bowls that it truly became Dinner. We happily twirled our pasta and stabbed our peas, content with a very low-key dinner and our own good health. Knock wood.