Rigatoni with Whatever

My cooking decisions this week are driven by two ideas:

1. Let's keep it relatively light. Relatively.
2. I ain't going to the supermarket.

This means our relatively light meals must only call for things we have on hand. Honestly, I love this test. I've spent a long time -- and not a little moolah -- stocking our pantry, and I enjoy nothing more than creating a full dinner without needing to pick up anything.

So you might guess that our (post-King Kong) meal began with me browning some pancetta. I'm so predictable. The final dish was rigatoni with a not-very-saucy sauce of pancetta, spinach, onion, garlic, parsley, chili, and tomato. The tomato was minimal. Margy had brought one plump red little guy home last week and I wanted to use it in something, so I tossed it in.

This turned out to be a cinch of a meal, and a tasty one too -- the modest one-dish antidote to multicourse holiday blowouts. We didn't even have bread. (But we did have cookies.)