THE LADY OF SHALLOTS

Warning---more prose than usual. I'll try not to do that too often. ----- I've been trying to intentionally cook vegetarian meals at least twice a week. I like MOST vegetables, but the ones I don't like, I REALLY don't like (I'm looking at you, eggplant). I also have legume/bean issues.  This makes it hard to cook vegetarian as I also want to be low-carb and my hypoglycemic-self needs some protein. So understand that it is with some measure of pride that I substituted chickpeas for cannellini beans in the recipe below.  I actually LIKE cannellini beans (one of the few), but we had none in the cupboard. What we did have was a can of chickpeas, of which I'm not a fan. But it turns out I'm even less of a fan of walking to the store in 88% humidity for one can of cannellini beans. So, I opened the can of garbanzo beans/chickpeas to make sure they were still ok (that can was there for a looooooooooong time), and here's where the pride comes in: I ...

This past week I needed to make Pasta Primavera for the women's shelter. According to Wikipedia , this dish has its roots in Manhattan in the 1970s--something that surprises me. Certainly it was not part of the culinary legacy my grandmother passed down to me, but I had always assumed it was a traditional Italian dish. Had I the time to dig more deeply beyond Wikipedia, I might be able to unearth different origins. At any rate, my mother-in-law gaveme an old British cookbook from the 90s called Classic Pasta Cuisine , edited by Rosemary Moon, complete with illustrations more reminiscent of a cookbook from the 1970s. I decided that this was probably the best opportunity to use it, so I cracked it open and found a Primavera recipe that looked legit inasmuch it had pasta, spring veggies, and herbs. Per usual, so there is no copyright infringement, I will list the ingredients, but not the amounts:  pasta (I used  De Cecco  penne rigate no. 41) salt asparagus green b...