Quick Pasta Salad

So this is a quick little salad. it goes well with some grilled chicken or, on a rainy day, you can sautee some cut up chicken and some Italian seasoning.

Here are the basic ingredients. I used half a box of pasta (any will do), a jar of sliced mushrooms, drained; half a large jar of roasted peppers and half a large jar of artichoke hearts, sliced. Reserve the liquid of the last two jars.
Add the vegies to a bowl. If you want more you can use the whole jars:
I added some Italian Seasoning:

Stirred it and added some of the reserved liquid from the jarred artickoke hearts and roasted peppers:
Overall it turned out ok, but I like a little bit more bite, so I ended up adding some Kraft Zesty Italian dressing, which I also used to marinate the chicken breats before grilling them.
Sorry no pictures of that:)

My new favorite Tomato Sauce

This is another great recipe from my favorite cookbook. it's the simple red sauce, and simple it is!
At first I was a little scared, as the recipe calls for fresh tomatoes, meaning you have to blanch and peel them, but it's not as hard as I thought.

Wash the tomtatoes:

Chop garlic and add it to olive oil in large pot. Don't heat until tomtatoes are done:
Add the tomtatoes to a pot of boiling water and boil for about 1 minute and a half. Note, that it will take a while for the water to boil again. Once the tomtato skins start spliting open, they're done:
Let them cool some:
Peel them and cut them into smaller pieces:
Sautee the garlic and add the tomatoes. The recipe calls for a few other ingredients, like sugar, which you add at this time too:
At the end add chopped basil and that's it:
Serve with spaghetti:
And don't forget the parmesan (only if you can eat dairy):
Our little one enjoyed each bite, without the cheese:
I have made this sauce several time since then. I love it. It's so yummy in the warmer months and pureed it was great to use for my meat loaf.

Did I say that I love this recipe?