Cooking Through My Cookbooks: Moosewood Edition

I went to college in upstate New York.  Yes it was a liberal arts college. Yes there were a lot of neo-hippies around. Yes I was friends with a good chunk of them. There used to be pot luck suppers, (that for the record, I never attended) where people would use The Moosewood Cookbooks as their basis.

What's the Moosewood Cookbooks? Oh my are you missing out.  The Moosewood Collective is based in Ithaca, NY and is a vegetarian restaurant. Now that's really the bare-bones explanation, but it will do. It's good to know that they make fantastically delicious food that you wouldn't know is vegetarian/vegan and they are cookbooks that I recommend to everyone who asks me for a good veggie cookbook. Now, I love bacon as much as the next bacon lover, but I love these cookbooks when I'm looking for something lighter.

And so, thus begins my 30 Things Cause I'm 30 Cooking through my Cookbooks: Moosewood Edition.

Tonight's recipe comes from Moosewood Restaurant: New Classics

Pasta with Easy Summer Sauce

This isn't so much a "sauce"as a dressing, and really this would make a fantastic picnic pasta salad. And omg it was amazing. Really. It truly was. I loved it, but I don't know if Jack did as much.

Does he like it? Or does he not like the picture?

I also have a habit of not following the directions/ingredient list exactly...so I ended up with waaay more than the 4-6 servings it said it was gonna be, but that's ok, leftovers are good.

2 cups quartered grape or cherry tomatoes (I used small heirloom tomatoes like the cookbook notes said I could do. And I used a bit more than 2 cups, probably more like 3 cups)
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoon minced fresh basil
1/2 cup minced red onions
1 garlic cloves (I used 3, cause garlic is love)
1/4 cup chopped black olives (I used a bit more)
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (optional, taste the mixture beforehand and see if you want to add it. I did but I could see how it all depends on the tomatoes)
1 pound farfalle (bowties! bowties are cool)
2 cups string beans (oh. 2 cups? hmm how about a whole bag of frozen ones because I didn't read the directions...)
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese (I used a whole 6oz container)

So. BIG pot of boiling water.
While you wait for that to boil, combine the first 8 or 9 ingredients.
Water boiling? Add pasta, when water gets back to a boil, wait 2-3 minutes, add string beans.
When pasta and string beans are done, drain. Put back in pot or a very large serving bowl. Add tomato "sauce" and toss.

ooooo so pretty!

What I was watching while eating dinner:

So Jack and I when I make a real meal and not a frozen dinner or a sandwich, we watch a movie or something.  For this we watched episodes 3, 4, and 5 of series 6 of Doctor Who (The pirates, the doctor's wife, and the gangers!)