PASTA WITH ALMONDS / ROASTED ASPARAGUS:

This pasta dish is something I'm working on. Often, when Katherine wants to eat pasta with a red sauce, I don't, so I eat my share of the pasta with toasted breadcrumbs (pasta con mollica) and/or some grated parmesan/pecorino (or sometimes with minced onion, garlic, thyme, and cannelini beans). Once, a while back, when I didn't have stale bread on hand to make breadcrumbs with, I used almond meal (coarsely ground almonds) instead, and liked it. so I tried something similar tonight, when K was using up the rest of a jar of pasta sauce with spaghetti.

I put 1 tb. olive oil in the cold skillet, added 3 small cloves of minced garlic, and turned the heat on low, to allow the oil to absorb as much of the garlic's flavor as it heated. When the garlic started to cook, I added two large minced sage leaves from the garden, and continued cooking over low heat. When the sage had wilted and started to give off its scent, I put in 2 or 3 tbs. of the almond meal and stirred the resulting mixture around for ca. 5 minutes before tossing it with the spaghetti and a little more olive oil.

It tasted ok, but there's still a ways to go to make this dish into something good. More/different herbs might be good, and I think it would definitely taste better if the almond meal were toasted separately first, then tossed with the pasta and garlic/herb/oil mixture just before serving. I'll try that next time, toasting it in a shallow pan for a few minutes in a moderate oven.

The roasted asparagus was fabulous. It's getting towards the end of the season for asparagus, which means the crop in the stores is mostly local (since we're further north) and hence very flavorful -- because fresher -- even when it isn't organic. (There's an argument to be made that locally produced non-organic food can be less environmentally harmful than organic produce that's been trucked hundreds of miles north -- I know there's some discussion of that online somewhere and will provide the link later).

And regardless of this, roasting asparagus (lightly tossed in olive oil w/ salt and pepper) for 15 mins. at 450 degrees is absolutely the way to go. A little minced garlic during the roasting, and a little lemon juice before serving are good but not necessary additions. Thanks to Jack Bishop's "Vegetables Every Day" for making this clear.