better than bar food

Sometimes I declare it a success if I eat dinner at all. Sometimes I declare it a success if I eat something other than bar food and beer for dinner. Sometimes I declare it a success if I actually cook something. A recent weeknight dinner falls somewhere between those last two. It was warm, it was made in my kitchen, and it wasn't half bad. 

It was, however, from a jar, basically. Sure, I boiled the pasta, cut the green beans, cooked the peas. But they all got tossed in pesto that came, yes, from a jar. It's not that I didn't have food in my pantry, but I've been having an unusually persistent craving for pesto lately, and by the time I stumbled in to the TJ's in my old neighborhood after an appointment one day, I was far too hungry to shop for the makings of the homemade stuff.

So maybe I used half the jar of pesto, made enough to feed a family of 4, and ate some of it out of the pan like I forgot my curtain-less kitchen window faces a busy side street. I'm just proud of myself for not giving in to that temptation to choose takeout over logging kitchen time, especially when ravenous. I'm also proud of myself for remembering a tip I saw somewhere to add a little pasta cooking water to your pesto sauce to thicken things up a bit. 

Never mind that last night, I did have bar food and beer for dinner. Little victories and all that...