Good Monday Morning.........

         Good Monday morning! What a beautiful morning it is. The sun is shining through the trees.
    waking everyone up with it's brightness and warmth. What a great way to start the day.!!
     My husband had trimmed some of the branches off the tree the day before as they were drooping and making it hard to mow  the grass under them. Plus now it lets more light through.

                                               

       The  Woodpecker was on a tree, looking for his breakfast. Wonder what was on his menu  today.  There is always a variety of insects for him to feast on.

                                                        
    I decided to sit on the front porch this morning and enjoy the sun rising and shining through the trees.  Plus I wanted to enjoy the beautiful Water Hyacinths in the pond. They are producing such beautiful lavender flowers.

 

             
             The flowers bloom for one or two days and than die off and than another one blooms. They are so delicate and pretty.

        

            The water cascading from the filter producing bubbles and water droplets sounded so nice and relaxing.  This with a cup of coffee was a perfect way to start off my day.  

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            My husband and I both had a doctor's appointment later in the afternoon.  Since it was lunch time when we got out of the doctor's, we decided to pick up something while out on the road.
Well, I knew we couldn't last too long doing the less meat diet.  Yup, we broke down and went to Burger King and each of us got a Whopper and a drink. The Whopper being the biggest fast food hamburger out there. With tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cheese, pickles, mayonnaise and yes, a burger the size of the large bun that it comes on.  Oh my, like I said in my last post, I think it will be a long struggle getting away from meat. But we did take our time and ate it nice and slow. Because I knew we would not get another one for a long time. And you might do the same thing, when you like something you eat it slow to make it last longer. What can I say?????????

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So for supper tonight, I knew I had to have something without meat. So I decided to make a pasta with Marinara sauce.

                                        
          I had a box of Penne Rigarte in my cupboard. So took that out and got the preparations ready for the ingredients to put in it.  No meat of course.!!!  :-)

                                                                                                             

  

      Had a jar of Ragu Marinara sauce.  Emptied that into a pot. Awww, they make cooking so much easier  now days with the prepared items that are out there now. Not that they taste any better than the homemade items.

 
                           Started boiling the Penne. I add a few drops of oil go keep it from sticking together. Some cooks say it works, others say it doesn't make any difference if you use it or not. But I am not taking any changes of it not working, so I always put the oil in and it seems to work well for me.   

                                                                      While the pasta is cooking, I start the sauce. What I am doing different tonight is adding  Chive and Onion Cream Cheese  to  the sauce.   When first married I did this when I did not have any other cheese to use. Now I see on tv and commercials to use Cream Cheese to make the sauce thicker , less acid and creamier.  I had always used plain cream cheese when I made it like this years ago. Tonight I had the  Chive and Onion on hand and used that.

    I mixed it in with the sauce as it was cooking, so that it would blend together.

      Next I drained the Pasta, but did not rinse it.

                                                     

When the sauce was finished cooking, I added the sauce to the Pasta. Something I learned from my mother and grandmother, was to take some of the pasta and add it to the left over sauce in the pot to get it all out. It sticks to the Pasta and you do not have to do a lot of scraping of the pot..  You just add it back into the dish. 

                                                          Mix  every thing than  put into the serving bowl.   As  you can see, the sauce is a little thicker and not as red, using the cream cheese.

                         
                                     Now it is plated and ready to eat.  I have about 4 of the old  Corning Ware plates left that I have had since I was first married. We still use them  when it is just the two of us. I used to have the the whole set, but after 46 years, it has shown its wear and tear and loss of all but four pieces.

                                                                 
                                      We still added the  Parmesan Cheese to the Pasta.

                                                    
             For dessert I had a large cantaloupe that I had gotten at an Amish farm the other day.  It was ready today to eat. So I cut that cup into bite size pieces.  The larger pieces are for my husband, as his bite is larger than mine. lol  (In reality, it is just the way I cut them up )

                                                     

         The cantaloupe was very sweet and juicy, so I wanted to add just a little tartness to  it. I had a bag of Dried Cranberries  and added a few to the cantaloupe. It gave it just a hint of tartness.

                                       
                Plus it added a hint of color to the all orange of the cantaloupe.

                                                      
        Main dish and dessert for tonight.  When I think of how I used to use the cream cheese years ago and now they are suggesting it, I am thinking.........hmmmmmm..........I might have won a prize or something back than for having this idea. but who knows. Too late now. Some big company came up with the same  idea to sell their cream cheese products. 

                                                         

            Well another meatless dish that was a hit with the hubby. I guess the Whopper was a slide by, and I made amends with this meatless pasta dish tonight.

            Now what to make tomorrow night? Maybe Pasta leftovers..........

                                                    

         Another one of our pond plants. This one we do not know the name of.
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         Hope everyone has a good evening.  And I am on an adventure with new ways of cooking.
Wish me luck. As long as I don't see too many of those Mc Donald and Burger King drive-thru's while we are out working on our will power. We will do pretty good.!!

                                                                   hugs,
                                                                   Eileen