Primavera for the Picky

Do-it-yourself pasta primavera shines the spotlight on picky kids...and the result are in.  Luke Zimmerman is not picky!  He had penne with two kinds of mushrooms, spinach, basil, artichoke hearts, onions and tomato sauce.  The picky girls had various versions of pasta with onions, capers, basil, artichoke hearts and tomato sauce but they avoided mushrooms and spinach which is odd in light of last week's lasagna which featured shitake mushrooms and was devoured by them.  I can not ever predict who will reject what and when or why.  Seemed the kids had begun to lose interest in our regular Asian style shitakes so I phased them out and then, when the lasagna was riddled with them, the joyful youngsters wanted the pieces with more shitake mushrooms. So they seemed like an obvious addition to another pasta dish, but no, only Luke likes them now.

This pasta was simple; just make pasta (we used gluten free) and we used sauce from a jar (Cucina Antica tomato basil) (don't tell anyone).  In a pan, I heated olive oil and consecutively cooked the onions, spinach and white and shitake mushrooms, replenishing the oil in between each.  Not too much clean up and everything was separate for the picky people.  Then, I made a separate serving dish for the cold stuff, artichoke hearts (Seggiano roasted in olive oil from Italy), capers and basil.  (My husband would simply die if I mixed the capers in.) 

So, Susannah made a masterpiece while some of us made less beautiful but more diverse selections.  While she missed out on the natural vitamin D of the shitakes (hard to come by in food) and the folate, Vitamins  K and A, manganese, magnesium and iron of the spinach, she did make some healthy selections (especially the basil fresh from the farmer's market) and she is pretty generous with those imported roasted artichoke hearts...