Vegetarian meal: Spaghetti and salad

It's vegetarian recipe time! Spaghetti is a pretty standard meal around here. We used to get the "whole wheat" pasta but I (we?) really prefer the texture of the regular semolina, so we've gone back to that version. While we make spaghetti pretty often, it's seldom that we've paired it with salad. But this salad? This one has won us over. We hardly ever made salad before I stumbled on a Greek salad recipe one evening. Now we look forward to this mixed greens salad, and we've had it three weeks in a row. This meal is quite hearty and has excellent leftover potential.

Delish! Those big chunks in the sauce are portobello mushroom.

Spaghetti
The spaghetti noodles are just regular semolina spaghetti pasta; we get it at Costco. For the sauce, we start with Classico's Tomato and Basil sauce (yes, I am Italian and I use tomato sauce from a jar, whatever). Then we add a little canola oil (to saute the garlic and onions), freshly chopped garlic, sweet onion, black olives, a big portobello mushroom, a few smaller white mushrooms, and some dried oregano. Top it off with Parmesan cheese!

Salad + Dressing
Our favorite produce market sells a blend of salad greens where you just pile them in a bag. The blend has arugula, baby spinach, some of those weird viney greens, and some purple lettuce/spinach. I don't know all of the types in there, but it's like "mixed greens." We chop up red onion and soak it in cool water for five minutes, then drain; it's way easier to eat raw this way. After adding the onion, we'll add kalamata olives and feta cheese.

For the dressing, we use a modified version a recipe I found online. Mix 2 Tbsp lemon juice, 2 cloves minced garlic (or more! Yum!), 1/3 cup olive oil, oregano, black pepper (freshly ground is best), and a sprinkling of salt. I like to prep it before the salad veggies so the garlic can lose a bit of its bite. If you plan on having salad leftovers, only add the dressing on the portions you're serving. Olive oil congeals in the refrigerator, so it's best to keep the veggies and dressing separate until you're ready to eat them.

Enjoy!