Pasta and red sauce

When a long day or week is over, and all great ambitions for haute cuisine have fizzled, what's in the cupboard? Pasta. Always in season, pasta is just another staple like dried beans and grains. When I first cut most wheat out of my diet, I mourned the loss of pasta. But after trying several brands of fancy, oddly-textured substitutes, reliable Trader Joe's came through yet again. TJ's brown rice spaghetti and fusilli cook and taste like standard dry pasta - with a little care to not overcook them (learn to love pasta al dente, Italian-style).

As if the gratifying carb load were not enough, pasta coats so well with nearly any sauce. While I love finding new variations (tomatoes, chard or kale and ricotta? yum. summer veggies, garlic and oil? yum? butter and mizithra? yum.), the ability to just open a glass bottle and spoon red sauce over boiled noodles can feel like grace itself. Well, maybe I'll add some sauteed onion and garlic, and a little sage and basil from the garden . . . that's not really cooking. It's relaxing. Almost as relaxing as eating a big bowl of pasta with red sauce, and then lying on the couch.