Pasta Bar

My mom came to hang out last night, which was very nice! She's not vegetarian and doesn't care for many substitutes, so when hosting her, I keep the food pretty simple. Last night, I went for a pasta bar where everyone could assemble their own dish.  I boiled cavatappi and served that with a few toppings. We had a marinara sauce, some soy burger crumbles (for the vegetarians), freshly-chopped basil, and garlic mushrooms.

There really isn't much of a recipe to speak of here, since the preparation for most of it was simply to prepare as directed by the packaging, however, the mushrooms were something I altered.

I made the mushrooms by cleaning and slicing 16 oz of mushrooms and sticking those in a pan with 3 cloves of garlic and 4 TBS melted Earth Balance margarine. Once they cooked down, I added 2 TBS of Merlot and 1 tsp onion powder, and cooked off the alcohol and let the sauce thicken until it was only very slightly saucy. It was a tasty topping for pasta, though it wasn't a particularly healthy one.

Mushrooms, per 1/4:
Calories: 134
Fat: 11 g
Protein: 3.7 g
Carbs: 4.7 g
Fiber: 1.5 g
Sugars: 2 g
Vitamin C: 7%
Iron: 18%