Updated May 1st, 2013. I finally remembered to take a picture!

Original:

For Lent this year, I decided to give something up that I could continue to do after the Lenten season was over. Instead of the crazy operation vegetarian mission that I did last year, I have gone smaller scale, but more sustainable. I’ve hopped on the bandwagon for the new “Meatless Monday” craze. So, for the last 4 weeks, I have been without meat at least one day a week and I’m loving it. I think it is something I can really do all the time.

But, few of the meals I’ve made have been super exciting. They are tasty and nourishing but not “wow” dishes. Until this one.

As I was making this, I was thinking that eh, it should be pretty good for a vegetarian dish. I had my neighbors over and offered to feed them and to my surprise and delight, everyone loved it. Words like delicious and amazing were thrown around. This was totally awesome.

I found this recipe on “Pink of Perfection”, which is a food blog I quite like. Apparently she found it on Epicurious. I’ve made a few changes, such as using angel hair pasta instead of penne, more tomatoes, and adding some parsley and oregano, but that’s about it!

I didn’t think I’d love it so much, so I didn’t take any pictures until after we had eaten and this was all that was left!

Angel Hair pasta with Red Chard and Garlic

Ingredients:

• 1 pound chard, stems cut from the leaves and the stems and leaves chopped separately
• 1/8 teaspoon dried hot red pepper flakes, or to taste
• 3 large garlic cloves chopped
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 large can of diced tomatoes
• 1/2 pound angel hair pasta
• 1 Tb fresh chopped parsley
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan as an accompaniment