Super Easy Pasta Sauce… Or … In Which Laziness Becomes Virtue

Back from the park with just enough time to poke some lunch into them before nap time. I open the fridge … and discover that someone in my family has eaten the lunch I had set aside. “Someone” almost certainly being my 23-year-old son, known to descend upon the kitchen in the small hours, looking for a second dinner before-bed snack.

This happens often enough that we do have a communication strategy designed to prevent such mishaps: a wide piece of green painter’s tape on the lid of the container, upon which is written in large block caps “DO NOT EAT!!!”

Except, I forgot. The boy young man can’t be expected to know. After all, he knows I’m usually after people to finish up the leftovers. We even have one night where there is no planned meal, called in the family the “fend for yourself” night, during which one has the opportunity — nay, the expectation — of clearing the fridge of leftovers. So, short of reading my mind, if there’s no DO NOT EAT sign on a container of food, he can hardly be blamed for assuming it was safe to eat.

Poop.

Which leaves me back from the park with five hungry toddlers and no meal in sight. Damn. Blood sugars dropping even as I speak, and nap time less than half an hour away. Must find food!

Pasta! Pasta’s easy, and they love it. And on the pasta? Ummm… cheese sauce. We always have cheese, milk, butter, flour. Whip up a white sauce, grate in the cheese. Easy enough. But when I open the fridge, there, front and centre, is a jar of leftover butternut squash, baked a couple of days ago. I really should use that up. Maybe I’ll add the squash to the cheese sauce, thicken it up, add some vegetable virtue. Or maybe …

Or maybe I’ll just throw some milk on top of that squash and puree it with the immersion blender right there in the jar, and call it pasta sauce!! Even easier than cheese sauce.

It took seconds. In ten more minutes, the kids were eating — no, devouring — their lunch, which included a good quarter cup of squash, each.

I will be remembering this!