Does Spinach Pasta = Green Veg?

Last week, I found a package of spinach linguine in my cupboard. God knows how long it had languished there. Thank heavens pasta doesn't spoil.

We had spent 2.5 hours shoveling out My Beloved's office. He's an incredible pack rat and a hopeless filer, so every six months or so I have to crack the whip and he reluctantly throws away two or three hundredweight of accumulated paper while I file the stuff that's important to keep. I was bone weary, not only from the physical work of schlepping multiple full trash cans to the recycling bin but also from the psychological work of being the cleanup police, not my favorite role. Dinner needed to be quick or it simply wasn't going to happen.

Oh, that blessed spinach pasta! Locally made pasta from Eduardo's of San Francisco. And thank heavens I remembered to thaw a chicken breast that morning! And, look!, there's some Swiss chard in the fridge. And Parmesan cheese. I'm saved!

While the pasta water was coming to a boil, I sorted through the Swiss chard, which had clearly been in the fridge too long, cutting out the thick stems and throwing away the nasty bits. I briefly considered not using it at all but I was pretty sure that spinach pasta, as hard as I might wish, does not equal a green veg. When the water boiled, I threw the Swiss chard in first briefly to blanch, then scooped it out into a warmed, buttered bowl to wait before adding the pasta to cook.

While the pasta boiled, I sliced the ginormous chicken breast in half sideways into two nice, leaf-shaped fillets and sautéed them in butter and lemon juice.

I tossed the pasta with butter and Parmesan cheese, then piled it onto plates, topped it with the Swiss chard, and crowned it all with the lemony chicken breasts. We ate ravenously and I left him to do the dishes, slinking away to collapse on the bed.