Hello lovelies. It has been two years since I blogged about food, mostly because when Spiderman died my eating habits changed. It is harder to cook for one person when what you want to be doing is cooking for two people. It has taken me two years to be able to write What I Ate Wednesday instead of What WE Ate Wednesday.
After he died I was exhausted mentally and physically. I struggled with meal planning. Do I make something BIG and eat it all week? No, I have discovered that two nights in a row is about my limit. Unless it's nachos, then that can go three nights in a row because nachos. More on them in a few weeks. But the act of cooking something fresh from scratch for one exhausted and sad person night after night was often too much. But these days I have things figured out.
These days I do a lot of small preps so that cooking from scratch goes easier. I plan to talk about these tips in the future. Today was one of those small prep days.
I haven't eaten Black Olive and Walnut Tapenade since Spiderman died. It was always one that I made in HUGE amounts and filled our freezer with jars for an easy Saturday night dinner. A friend mentioned it to me that she loved my recipe and made it all the time and I suddenly thought, "Why I am I not making it all the time either?"
And so I did. But instead of making insane amounts because my freezer is full up and being one person it will take me twice as long to get through the jars, I made a regular sort of amount. I saved up smaller jars that would have enough for one person servings, but of course if you are feeding more people you can freeze in larger portions like I used to. Also I changed up the way I used to do it. We always served it with roasted cherry tomatoes, but these are a bit pricy and I just can't be arsed to heat up my oven for 15 minutes just for one person so I just bunged in some oil packed sun dried tomatoes. I always keep these on hand in the fridge as they add a pop of flavour with little effort. Plus a jar costs about the same as a punnet of cherry tomatoes and I can get several meals out of one jar.
We used to always serve it with kale and I still do. This time I added half a tin of cannellini beans just to make it more filling. I will use the other half of the tin of beans in another, slightly different pasta recipe tomorrow.
Tapenade Pasta with Kale and White Beans
First make your tapenade. You need:
1.5 cups black olives (this was a 330g /163g drained weight jar)
1/2 cup walnuts
4-5 cloves chopped garlic
2TB olive oil
Throw everything but the oil in a food processor and pulse until crumbly, then add the oil and pulse again a few times and divide into jars.
You need half a cup of the tapenade per serving. This made enough for me to have three pastas and one pizza (it made 1.5 cups plus 1/3 cup so I plan to use the jar with less on a pizza.) I labelled three of the jars and popped them in the freezer.
To make the rest of it:
This is obviously just for one person so feel free to double it.
50g or thereabouts of curly kale (3-4 massive handfuls)
half a tin white beans, drained
juice of half a lemon
more garlic
3 TB nutritional yeast flakes for a cheesy flavour
3-4 oil packed sun dried tomatoes, snipped into bits
half a cup tapenade
No need for salt because of the olives, but lots of black pepper
3/4-1 cup (GF) pasta of choice
Boil a pot of water for the pasta. I like to use water from a boiled kettle to speed things along. You can add a bit of salt or a stock cube to the pasta water if you like. When it is boiling, add the pasta and boil for however long the package says.
Meanwhile, throw all the other ingredients into a Hugh Jass pot and cook with about 1/4 cup of the pasta water until the kale turns bright green and softens.
Add the cooked and drained pasta to the veg mix. Eat.
If you have the tapenade already done this comes together in 20 minutes or less.
Plus you have extras for future meals. Which is a life saver for when you are tired and need something healthy, cheap and fast.
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