Gooood Fooood!

I love cooking food! Especially food with lots of vegetables.

It makes me feel healthy even if it isn't SUPER healthy.
And I love the colors of the vegetables and all the different flavors they bring to meals.
Today I made a recipe that I have made once before.
It's called Ziti with Ratatouille except for this time
I made it with a different type of pasta (not Ziti).
This recipe serves four to six people but I made it tonight and there were four of us eating and there were TONS of leftovers! So I think it serves a little more than that.
Oh, and by the way this recipe is from a book called Food to Live By by Myra Goodman.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup olive oil
1 small yellow onion, cut into 1/2-inch dice (about 1 cup)
8 large cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 medium-size eggplant, cut into 3/4-inch cubes (about 3 cups) (I didn't end up using eggplant I used chicken instead)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 small yellow bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 3/4-inch dice
1 small red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded, and cut into 3/4-inch dice
1 pound dried ziti
3 medium-size zucchini (about 12 oz.), cut into 1/2-inch thick quarter-moon pieces
6 large ripe tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and coarsely chopped, or 2 cans (28 oz. each) diced tomatoes, drained
3/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil
1 wedge of Parmesan cheese (at least 2 oz.), for garnish.

Directions:
1. Heat 2 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until the onion is golden and the garlic fragrant, about 3 minutes longer. Transfer the onion mixture to a large bowl, being careful to remove all the garlic.
2. Add 4 tablespoons of the olive oil to the skillet and heat over medium heat. When hot, add the eggplant. Season it with salt and pepper. Cook the eggplant until just soft, about 10 minutes.
3. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the eggplant to the bowl with the onion. Add 1 more tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet and, when hot, add the yellow and red bell peppers. Season them with salt. Cook the bell peppers, stiring frequently, until they are soft, about 8 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bell peppers to the bowl with the onion and eggplant.
4. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to bil over high heat. Add the ziti and cook according the the package directions.
5. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the skillet and, when hot, add the zucchini. Season it with salt and pepper. Cook the zucchini until crisp-tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the zucchini to the bowl with the other vegetables.
6. Add the tomatoes, parsley, basil, and 1/2 teaspoon of each salt and pepper to the skillet. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook until hot, about 4 minutes.
7. Add the vegetables and any liquid in the bowl to the tomato mixture and cook until warmed through, about 2 minutes. There should be quite a bit of liquid in the skillet with the ratatouille.
8. Drain the ziti in a colander, setting aside 1/2 cup of the pasta cooking water.
9. Transfer the ziti to the large bowl and add the ratatouille. Stir gently to combine. If the pasta seems too dry, add some of the pasta cooking water.
10. Transfer the ratatouille and pasta mixture to a serving platter or pasta bowls. Using a vegetable peeler shave curls of the Parmesan cheese over the pasta and serve immediately.

Here is me with lots of yummy beautiful veggies!


Here are the rest of the ingredients in all their beautifulness:

And here's me with some yummy dessert! Funny story about Milky Ways: My friend bought me an ENTIRE box of these for Christmas. I went to Flagstaff the weekend after Christmas and left my candy bars at home. BIG MISTAKE! I did hide them but obviously not very well because when I got back there were FOUR out of the original THIRTY-SIX Milky Ways! :[ Super sad story but I guess it's OKAY because I don't really need to eat thirty-six Milky Ways all by myself. Haha. But I swear my siblings have chocolate/candy sniffing noses because they find ANY HIDDEN candy in our house. My mom can tell you all kinds of crazy stories about that.
So, I forgot to take a picture of the delicious outcome of my food but maybe I'll remember tomorrow to take a picture of some of the leftovers and add them onto this post. We'll see. It was DELICIOUS! :] Try it sometime! And have some dinner guests over if you're a college student or something because food brings people together. I ate with one of my roommates and two friends tonight and it brought on good conversation and hopefully created some good memories. Although I'm not gonna lie, when we were all stuffing our faces with food we weren't talking too much. But, have some fun cooking and enjoy some good company and good conversation!

P.S. If anyone has any good recipes that are relatively easy and of course yummy then post 'em on here! I would love to try making some new food.