Simple pasta recipe

Well hello! I'm not exactly sure why, but I've just not been in the blogging mood lately. 

Ironically, since my blog is 'sleepless in Sandy', I couldn't sleep anymore this morning. Baby (who's almost two, but he will always be baby to me) sleeps like a perfect angel. Goes to bed at 7pm happily, awake, and without a peep... and sleeps ALL night long until usually 8 or 8:30 am. Love him. He's been sleeping like this for at least the last 6 months... probably since I weaned him at 14 months. And Ty gets up early, but gets himself breakfast and watches a show on daddy's iPad. But my blog will always be 'sleepless'. It reminds me of those exhausting nights and tired mornings with young babies and makes me thankful for my sleep. 

Anyway, I found myself awake much earlier than normal today. The house was quiet, the coffee was hot, and blogger was calling. I don't think I mentioned this before, but last month sleepless in Sandy turned a whole year old!! This was exciting for me, and I wanted to do something special to celebrate.... but I just never came up with the perfect thing. Ah, well...

Here is a great recipe I wanted to share, taught to me by my mama. Simplest pasta ever. And great timing too, because I just scored 41 boxes of free pasta at Albertsons with coupons. Probably my best coupon deal ever. And no, I don't plan to eat pasta every night to "use it up"... We eat pasta probably twice a week, so this should last close to six months for our family. Visit frugal living (my fav couponing website) to learn more.

 My mom knows the fancy italian name for this traditional pasta recipe, but I can't remember it... and she's probably still asleep. :) So I shall not wake her. And we shall call it Butter Parmesan Spaghetti. 

Ready?

Melt butter in large frying pan. I used about 3 tablespoons here, plus a couple tablespoons of olive oil. 

Add lots of fresh ground pepper. The fancy italian name is something about pepper... So this is important. And yummy.

Meanwhile, your noodles should be boiling... make sure to reserve about 1 cup of the cooking water. That's the secret, apparently.

Add your cooking water to the butter and pepper. I didn't add the whole cup right away. You can always add more if you need it saucier. 

Toss your (drained) noodles into the butter mixture. These are the free noodles I got, Ronzoni garden delight, or something. They actually have veggies in them- something like a whole serving of veggies per serving of pasta. Why not? And they are yummy!

Now add lots of grated parmesan cheese. Start with a little and stir really good... the pasta water thickens up as you add the cheese, and you don't want it too thick. It's all about the right balance of cheese to pasta water. So add slowly. 

You should end up with lovely saucy noodles. My sauce was a bit too thick in this pic. I went a little cheese crazy. Add extra pepper now too. 

Oh, here's a secret- use freshly grated parmesan, or..... if you are out and you have the shake can of parmesan (my hubby loves that stuff so we always have it and it keeps forever in the fridge), use it and it tastes just as great! This makes it a perfect recipe for just before I need to grocery shop again and I'm out of everything. 

My chives are growing like weeds right now. They must love rain. We've had lots of rain. I know I mentioned that recently so I won't elaborate. Anyway. 

Chives taste fab snipped on top of this simple pasta. As does a little lemon zest. You can even stir a little fresh squeezed lemon juice into your sauce. Or citrus vodka as my mother does. I plan to try it next tossed with some roasted veggies. Broccoli perhaps? Yum.