Simple and Easy Tortellini

Ever have those days when you’re so busy with work, school, running kids to soccer practice that you look at the clock and think “How did it get to be 6PM already? I still have to make dinner!” This recipe for tortellini does the trick!

Frankly we all have days like that. The last thing I want to do is pile in the car and drive to the nearest fast food place, so I tend to keep some convenience foods in my freezer for these harried occasions. If you take time while at the store, you can find those quick-fix meals that are easy on the wallet AND the waistline.

So last night, I grabbed the bag of frozen Great Value Cheese Tortellini and threw it in a pot of boiling water. The tortellini only take about 5 minutes or so to cook depending on how high you have the water boiling. I turn the boil down a bit so the pasta does not fall apart, so 7 minutes for me.

While the pasta was cooking, I put together a quick salad of lettuce, tomato and olives. By keeping salad staples in the fridge, I have items on hand to put a simple salad together that is both healthy and tasty. Some of my staples include lettuce, tomatoes, olives, cucumber, hard boiled eggs, various beans and crumbly cheeses such as feta. This way a salad is always at my fingertips.

For a quick tortellini sauce, you can easily open a jar of Classico and heat it up. I wasn’t in the mood for a tomato based pasta sauce so I heated up olive oil in a small frying pan and added a big clove of chopped garlic, some oregano, parsley, crushed red pepper and capers. I gave it a pinch of salt and a big pinch of pepper to finish it off. Once the pasta was cooked, I added the olive oil mix to the pasta just enough to coat it. I like to taste the flavor of the food, not a bunch of excess sauce.