Happy Earth Day, Pulled Tendon and Spinach Seedling Pasta Sauce

Happy Earth Day! To celebrate Earth Weekend, Arielle and I spent the weekend with my friend Kelly in Harrisburg, PA. It was to be a weekend of hiking and enjoying nature. My leg started hurting after our Saturday hike, so yesterday we decided to go for an easy walk at the Shenks Ferry Wildflower Preserve – it was beautiful! Plenty of wildflowers, like these Virginia bluebells,

Trillium, Dutchmans britches, and more! The ferns were getting ready to unfurl…

So, my break from running to hike may have some bad consequences, it appears that I have strained my achilles tendon again. The last time this happened I was out of commission for about 2 weeks. But then I discovered kinesiology tape – this stuff is amazing! So I picked some up on our drive home and am all taped up.

I may even be able to run lightly tomorrow. I am supposed to run a 10k on Saturday; keeping my fingers crossed. If it feels bad at all when I try to run, I will rest a few more days and see how it is on Friday.

After we returned home, I thinned the spinach in my garden. This resulted in about a cup of spinach seedlings that I pulled from the ground.

Well, I hate wasting anything from my garden. So I rinsed them well, pulled off any stringy roots, and decided to make a quick pasta sauce with some of the few remaining items in my freezer from last season and this year’s infant spinach. The result was quite tasty!

Spinach Seedling Pasta Sauce

2 cups Basic Tomato Sauce

1 cup Tomato Confit

1 cup Frozen Corn, thawed (from Filasky’s Produce)

1 cup spinach seedlings, from the garden (you an use chopped spinach as well)

1 tsp olive oil (I used the oil that had frozen in the tomato confit)

Pinch of Kosher salt

1 pound pasta

Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano cheese for grating

Directions

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil, cook the pasta according to package directions.

Meanwhile, if you are using frozen ingredients, thaw the tomato sauce, tomato confit and corn. Place the tomato sauce and confit in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low.

Heat a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and saute the spinach for about 30 seconds. Add to the tomato pot.

Put the corn in the skillet and cook until warm and season with a pinch of Kosher salt. Add to the tomato pot. Cook over low heat for a few more minutes until the sauce is heated through.