Easy Pasta Dinners

After a busy weekend of babysitting, we were pretty much too exhausted to make anything other than the go-to pasta, vegetable, and salad dinner.

That's okay, because it's a very delicious meal.  Ingredients are simple, and preparation is easy:
Rice pasta
Trader Joe's Traditional Marinara Sauce
Trader Joe's frozen artichokes
Frozen brussel sprouts
Chopped onions and garlic
Fresh basil from garden

That's just the pasta and sauce.

For the vegetable side dish and salad, everything was straight from the garden!  I'm always excited when half of the meal was grown by us!  On the back patio!

Sauteed chard, with a little bit of Earth Balance butter and crushed garlic.  Mmm, yum.

Salad of baby lettuce, salad bowl lettuce, green pepper, and cherry tomato.  So fresh and delicious.  The dressing was simply a squeeze of fresh lemon a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprinkle of black pepper.

After doing parent duty for two little boys under the age of 3 all weekend I realized that as a parent it might be impossible most of the time to make elaborate dinners like I sometimes do.  With all those ingredients and everything taking up space and time.  When we were babysitting, we either ate at the counter while feeding the kids simultaneously, or were too exhausted after they went to bed to cook anything.  We definitely want our own kids someday, don't get me wrong, and I love those little boys like they were my own; but in the meantime... I think I will relish the time we have in the kitchen to cook, and follow recipes, and make up my own, and sit down at a table to eat dinner.  And when the time comes for us to have kids, I will cherish every moment of that too.