A sauce for all seasons.

It's spring. Spring vegetables like peas or fava are abundant.
Here is my version of a light sauce as pasta primavera, or pasta with spring vegetables.

Ingredients:
2 T Olive oil
1T butter
1/2 C chopped onion
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
a small bunch of chopped parsley, or mint
1/2 C of white wine
1/2 C of chicken stock
1/4 C of heavy cream
2 Cs of fresh or frozen peas or fava, shelled, blanched and outer skin removed
salt and pepper to taste
Fettuccine noodles

Start the pot of water for the fettuccine. Add a Tablespoon of salt and prepare the sauce while the water achieves the boiling point.

In a saute pan, saute' the onion with the oil and the butter until soft. Add garlic and stir until opaque. Add wine and stir until most of it is absorbed. Add chicken stock and  heavy cream until warmed up, then salt and pepper to taste, and 2 Cs of peas, fresh or frozen. If you use fresh fava, blanch them in the boiling water before the pasta is added; remove and cool; slip off the outer skin and add the naked fava to the sauce.
Keep warm.
(Both fava and peas will cook by the time the pasta is added.)

Cook the pasta, drain it, and add it to the sauce and stir until everything is coated, and the peas have softened.  To serve, pass some grated cheese, add chopped mint or parsley and  enjoy.

Other variations:
Cubed zucchini
Artichokes, cleaned, blanched, cut in smaller pieces and sauteed with the onions.

When you are sick of cooking...

When I was a working professional, with a hungry family, I had to be very organized and prepared for days when cooking was out of the question.
Did I pick up food at the take=out places? Yes.
Did I have choices? Yes.

The point is we always have choices. It is just how much energy we are willing to expend to prepare healthy meals.  Even now when I'm retired and have lots of time, I get sick of cooking and planning meals for us two.  I get tired of the same foods; and I get tired of my responsibilities.

So, I do as my ancestors did. I forage.  In the refrigerator. In the freezer. In the pantry. In the garden. Even here on this deck.  Let's do this together, forage on this deck.
Notice lettuces, strawberries, possible tomatoes.
A salad is born.

A can of sardines, or tuna, layered with a slice of cucumber or pickle, on toasted points or saltines, and we  now have a complete meal.  Frozen bananas whirled in the blender with milk or coconut milk, a dash of lavender or almond extract, and dessert is born.
The trick is to think like a hungry paleo woman, foraging,  tasting roots and canes and fruit and adding these to the larder.

Yesterday, I picked some spinach and tender shoots of fava beans to saute and serve with canned beans.
I learned from Jamie Oliver that fava beans leaves are edible! Who knew?
What have you created in your foraging mood?