Pasta, sauce and sauteed vegetables

Last year, over Memorial Day weekend, I visited a dear friend and her husband in Boston. The two of them engage in all sorts of food preparing endeavors upon which I've yet to embark, grilling pizzas and brewing beer being among the more exciting of them. I did, however, manage to pick up a couple tricks from them during my visit, which have now become staples 'round the Sanchez house. One of the tasty meals that my friend prepared for me was nothing more than sauteed veggies and homemade pasta sauce over spaghetti, but it was so good and so easy that it now finds itself regularly employed in my menu rotation. Thank you, dear friend.

While spaghetti or any pasta you prefer works fine, we've recently discovered (at Trader Joe's) and grown to love the bucati noodle. It's a long, thin and hollow tube. I've read it described as "toothy", which somehow perfectly captures the texture.

Sauce:

Pour two 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes into a small sauce pan, season as desired, and simmer for 30 or so minutes, or however long it takes to prepare the rest of your dinner. I use a Cuisinart Smart Stick hand blender to puree the sauce to a less chunky consistency, but this step depends on personal preference.

In my sauce, I like to: heat some olive oil in the pan and cook minced garlic in it for a minute before adding the tomatoes; add some oregano, basil and ground black pepper; and, if I'm feeling really ambitious, I add cooked carrots to the sauce before pureeing it. (These are the only sneaked vegetables I foist upon my children!)

Vegetables:

Heat 2 Tbs. olive oil in a large pan, and add vegetables. For this dinner, I like zucchini and broccoli and sometimes yellow pepper. Saute until tender-crisp, about 7 minutes, adding more oil if necessary. Add fresh minced garlic during the last minute of cooking, if desired. Spoon sauce on pasta; serve vegetables on the sauce. Enjoy!