Make-your-own summer pasta dinner

Before I went gluten-free and dairy-free, one of my favorite comfort foods was a bowl of pasta with olive oil, garlic and chillies. But I could also eat other comfort foods - pizza, chinese takeaways etc. Now, my choices are much more limited so I tend to get ridiculously happy when I end up with a meal that is incredibly tasty and easy. And you can't get any easier than this pasta dish.

Put your pasta on. In a pan, heat some olive oil (enough to coat all your pasta) and add garlic slices and chilli flakes, both to taste. I tend to use a lot of garlic. :-) Serve each person a plate of pasta coated in the olive oil mixture. Also set out - torn pieces of parma ham, olives, diced fresh tomatoes, dried or semi-dried tomatoes, roquette salad leaves, toasted pine nuts and torn fresh basil. Any anything else you want - my husband added grated parmesan to his dish last night. 

The beauty of this is that everyone takes whatever they want. All the flavors are fresh and work well together but if someone doesn't like one ingredient (or likes a lot of one of the flavors) it's not a problem. A super tasty summer dish, perfect for entertaining. We liked it so much that we're having it again tonight! :-)

This is my entry for the Whip up Something New challenge - July's edition is hosted by Margot, visit her linky post to add your recipe and check out the other entries.

Recipe: Quick Courgette Lasagne

That post title is going to look weird among all the book titles! But what the hell, I've been talking and thinking and talking some more about using this blog for more than just books for a while and it's time to do something about it. The main reason for my wanting to shift the focus a bit is that I'm not reading enough to post as regularly as I'd like. Since Shane was born I have other things that I'd like to share with you. Some even overlap with stuff I've read on other book blogs - watch out for my upcoming rant about gender-biased toys. ;-)

I've been feeding Shane ready-made food up until now, but he's ready to try some of the food we're eating. I've been leafing through Annabel Karmel recipes for weeks now and couldn't decide on how to start etc so I just went to the supermarket and bought a bunch of vegetables and small pasta shapes. I still didn't know how to start but now I had these giant courgettes in the fridge and they had to be saved. So I made Shane some sort of courgette pasta and found this recipe for Quick Courgette Lasagne for us.

It was easy to make and perfectly yummy, definitely to be made again. Let me know if you try it!