Taste of Kiwi: Blog of Author Shelley Munro

Mr. Munro has worked late for the last few nights, which has meant I’ve had to dine alone. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like cooking for one. When it’s just me for dinner I tend to snack. Tonight I was tempted to make toasted sandwiches, but then I thought no – that’s not healthy.

In the end I went with pasta. The contents of our fridge were pretty sparse, but I managed to find onion and mushrooms. I added frozen corn kernels, part of a fresh tomato and the last quarter of a jar of pasta sauce. Everything was cooked and ready to eat in fifteen minutes. Add a glass of wine and it was fast food at its best.

My pasta meals are different every time. Sometimes I’ll add pesto or blue cheese and nuts – whatever I have in the fridge and pantry at the time usually works with pasta.

Another favorite meal is a baked potato topped with thick Greek yoghurt and a salad, although this takes a bit longer to cook.

Do you like cooking for one? What meals do you tend to have when it’s just you?

When we were in the supermarket at the weekend, hubby and I debated purchasing some fresh ravioli. We decided it was too expensive and thought that maybe we should try making our own. Tonight hubby searched through our recipe books, made the pasta dough and filled it with ricotta cheese, spinach, pumpkin, nutmeg and a little cheddar cheese. We don’t have a round cookie cutter so it was difficult cutting out circles of the pasta dough. In the end, we did squares or triangles. Cooking them was easy, and although we worried about the filling squirting out while they boiled, this didn’t happen.

End result: They were delicious, although next time we’d try to roll the dough a bit thinner. We had a little of the filling over and that’s for tomorrow night’s dinner – we’re putting it inside jacket potatoes.

Have you ever made your own pasta? Do you like pasta, and if so, what’s your favorite kind?