Since Dick and I were arguing about making the bed, there was no time to make dinner. So, I just threw some pasta together…you can get all the exact ingredients (for the major stuff) in this recipe at TRADER JOE’S.

We discovered this great tapenade pasta one day while shopping at Trader Joe’s where they hooked us with the sample. If you don’t have access to Trader Joe’s, just use a comparable substitute.

This a great dish you can throw together in about 30 minutes when you are lazy to cook or don’t have the time to cook.

Here’s what I did:

INGREDIENTS

Use your favorite pasta and tapenade. The pasta is an organic Fusilli (I guess that means curly pasta).

The tapenade is a Roasted Red Pepper and Artichoke Tapenade. This one is quite tasty!

Tapenade is usually around $4-5 a jar but at Trader Joe’s, it’s like $2-3.

You’re also going to need to dice up some garlic. Lots if you love garlic like we do!

STEP 1

Cook your pasta according to the instructions on the bag.

You can cook your pasta a little “al dente” (slightly uncooked) because we’re going to cook it for a sec longer with the sauce.

STEP 2

Put some olive oil in your pot

Add your cooked pasta and top off with the tapenade.

Add your garlic (not pictured) and if you have cherry tomatos, slice them in half. Canned fish such as tuna is also excellent. We don’t have any of these today so we just keep it simple.

Sometimes simple is the best!

Add more salt and pepper if you need it, cook it on medium for about 5 minutes and serve!

Top it off with some parmesan if you have some. We didn’t.

THE SIDES

Since we’re just throwing together a meal with what we have and we just recently shopped at Trader Joe’s…

We have some canned sardines in olive oil.

Dick wants to have the sardines on the side. These sardines were really delicious.

Dick makes a salad.

Obviously you can buy the salad stuff at any grocery store.

This is the basics: Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion, olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt & pepper.

WHAT IS AN ITALIAN DINNER WITHOUT RED WINE

Our dinner…

Accompany with your favorite Red Wine.

This is a 2007 Rootstock Lodi Zinfandel is really great with the pasta.

Flavorful and bit on the woody side, it is slightly strong when you first open the bottle so be sure to let it breath first.

CHEERS !!

(Yes, we made up by the end of the night.)

Enjoy your TRADER JOE Italian Dinner!!

-Jane, Culinary Goddess

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