Pasta tends to be a dinnertime trap.
Pasta tends to be a dinnertime trap.
We get it. Feeding your family on a busy weeknight requires the navigation of a complicated matrix in which you must balance the competing demands of limited cooking time, ingredient availability, dwindling energy and patience, picky children, ringing phones, ridiculous afterschool activity schedules and — of course — homework.
So we understand how it happens. You discover those two or three easy pasta dishes that somehow can come together in the midst of all that chaos and that everyone — or at least most of your family — will actually eat. And once you find those dishes, you soon find yourself in the pasta trap. You almost never make any other pasta dish.
But we wanted to help spring you from the trap. We came up with 10 fresh ideas for serving up pasta for dinner. None is complicated. All are versatile enough to adapt to whatever you have on hand. And all can be made with whatever pasta size or shape you’ve got. Because who has time to fuss over farfalle vs. penne when soccer practice is screaming down your neck?