Savory Sundays: Pasta and spinach

Pasta is not one of my specialties, I'll admit that. I'm not one to just boil up some pasta, toss it in some sauce or whatever and then serve it with whatever. But when I see recipes like this, I feel like I should be doing that. This recipe, which is from Giada de Laurentiis, is great because it is so simple.

* 1 pound whole wheat or multi grain penne
* 3 garlic cloves
* 2 ounces goat cheese
* 1 ounce reduced fat cream cheese
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
* 6 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves
* 2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

First up, here's what I used. I failed to notice that when buying the baby spinach, I was actually buying a baby spinach salad. Luckily I had enough baby spinach on hand to make up the difference.



Mix up half the spinach with the garlic, goat cheese and cream cheese as well as salt and pepper.



Place the other half of the baby spinach leaves in a bowl.



Toss the pasta with the spinach in the bowl, add the sauce and then toss altogether.



And then you've got yourself a tasty bowl of pasta.



Now, I'm not a big fan of cream cheese nor do I care for goat cheese. However, the spinach had enough flavor to carry the plate. It's something I'll be making again... probably soon since the goat cheese is just sitting in my fridge collecting, well, collecting nothing really, just sitting there.