Women at work and their tips, challenges, advice, complaints, and experiences

Today was a long, busy day for our family!  Right now we're doing "single vehicle ops", as my hubby says, until we can get our other truck down to California from Washington - usually it's no biggie since I work from home and homeschool, but today was the first meeting of the school year for the local homeschool group.  And guess what wasn't within walking distance?  Yep, the meeting place.

The upside of all the rushing during lunch for him to bring the truck home to me, us to drop him back off, and to head to the meeting was that we had a wonderful time and met lots of new friends, many of whom are new to the area as well.  After that the kids and I hit the library here for the first time, then headed down to pick up Dad at work.  You can imagine how ravenous we all were by the time we walked back in the door at dinnertime!

I lucked out, though - during our last trip to Costco I picked up a double package of Seven-Cheese Tortellini and threw it in the freezer.  My daughter won't eat spaghetti sauce these days, and has never been one for white sauces (not that I had any handy anyway), but everybody likes to dip ravioli and tortellini in ranch.  We all like fresh tomatoes as well, and Hubby spotted some at the commissary recently that he couldn't resist - so I got creative! 

The end result?  Everyone approved, even my little picky eater, who downed all but a few bites of tomato.  Want to give it a try?  Here's the recipe I came up with:

What You Need:

• 1 package pre-made tortellini (I used a 7-Cheese found in the refrigerated section of Costco; their chicken-stuffed ravioli might work too!)
• 4 small tomatoes (substitute 2 large tomatoes, or several handfuls of grape tomatoes), cored, seeded, and diced to bite-size
• 2 tsp dried basil
• ranch dressing

What To Do:

• Prepare pasta according to package directions.
• While water is boiling and pasta is cooking, core, seed and dice your tomatoes.  Set aside.
• Two to three minutes before pasta is finished, add basil to pot.  Stir well.
• When pasta is done cooking, drain and spoon onto serving dishes (salad plates work well if you've got kids; the tortellini are easier to catch).
• Drizzle ranch over pasta; top with tomatoes and serve.

If you've got a veggie garden or need an excuse to take a trip to the farmers market, this is it!  I'm thinking I'll try this with some other pre-made pastas soon, such as the chicken ravioli I mentioned above.  I think I'd add some shredded mozzarella then.  Hmmmm, the wheels are turning now!