I really really really wanted pizza for dinner tonight, but I didn’t have tomato sauce. And the pizza place is four long blocks away. And the grocery store is six longer blocks away. And it’s snowing. I could have made some sort of crazy pumpkin sauce or even used my red lentil soup as sauce since it’s so thick, but I was only in the mood for some traditional cheesy, saucy pizza. So I gave up. I made pasta instead. Some things aren’t meant to be.

I used 1/3 cup dry whole wheat pasta. While it was boiling, I chopped more red cabbage — the only available vegetable I have (my carrots are for work snacks) — and tossed that in with the pasta. Then I started to worry about not having enough protein, especially after today’s exercise-fest … until I remembered a trick my stepmom taught me years and years ago when pasta was all I ever ate (literally).  I beat an egg in a bowl, poured it into the boiling pasta and cabbage, gave a little stir, and voila! Protein problem solved:

The fun thing about red cabbage is that it turns everything a deep blue, and blue is my favorite color! Here’s the pasta water after it all finished cooking:

To my pasta bowl, I added a Tbsp pesto (pre-made!), grated fresh parmesan, grated homemade cheddar, and freshly ground black pepper:

Details:

The cabbage turned my egg blue!

For dessert, I had 1/6 of a giant banana with just under a Tbsp peanut butter:

And a Godiva dark chocolate:

With raspberry caramel inside!

Time to start getting ready for bed and the real work week tomorrow.  I feel so off-balance after just one day off! What do you do to get back into the swing of things after a vacation?