How to Make a Simple But Jaw Dropping Bowl of Spaghetti with Tomatoes...and a few other things

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A few years ago, we decided that we wanted to know what we're exactly eating. I mean, being Vegan, we obviously only eat fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and funghi. But did we really know what was inside our Vegetables?

So I came up with the fun idea of growing our own food, or better said growing as much as we could. My only issue was, at the time, we didn't have a garden!!!

Set on the idea of growing food instead of buying food (which was probably my main drive), I decided to get plant pots and old paint buckets from the trash and fill them with soil and grow grow grow and then grow some more. My neighbors held me for crazy, which just gave me more motivation, especially since I only used water and no chemicals.

Oh boy, did we grow... within just 6 months, altogether we had over 85 large pots growing tomatoes, kale, zucchine, cucumbers, basil, tomatillios, lettuce etc etc and another 120 - 150 pots of sprouting seedlings, which I planted weekly.
At the time we were living in Mallorca, which has a lovely warm climate for most of the year. There was no way, I wasn't going to take advantage of it.

"And when the locals told me you can't grow tomatoes twice in a year, especially not in October, I smiled. Well come October, I smiled with even bigger grins on my face and offered them San Marzano tomatoes and crunchy fresh bell peppers."

The reason I write this is because right now in Italy, my garden is bursting at the seems with that much food! When I walk in to the garden, I feel rich! But that very same feeling I have, you can have too and I want each and everyone of you to have it. All you need is an old bucket, some dirt and a few seeds to start.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well when you cook up your meal and you have an abundance of homegrown food. The happy sensation and gratitude you have in that very moment, makes you want to dance, skip and sing for joy. That and you usually end up just looking at each other saying "wow, that tastes a thousand times better. I knever knew tomatoes could taste like that".

So to change that right now, without having your own veggies. Try to avoid the supermarket and cheap discounters and instead, go to the farmers market, go to the swap meet, look around you. When making such a simple dish as this Spaghetti with tomatos, it makes a world of difference and will open up a whole new world of flavour.

Now on to the menu!

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Ingredients

Things you'll need:

• 12 ounces/320 grams/0.7 pounds of Spaghetti. We've used a whole wheat (spaghetti alla chitarra, which is SQUARED!), choose one you like, it doesn't matter if it's white or wheat pasta. But why not try a whole wheat, it's great?
• 4 cups cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 cup capers (uless you love them like we do, then just double it!)
• Bunch of fresh basil
• 1/2 a red onion
• Sale & pepe (salt & pepper, I just like saying that in Italian)
• Extra virgin olive oil

Almost everything is homegrown, except for the spaghetti. I wish they had spaghetti trees!

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Directions

The How to Make Part:

1. Place a pot of water on to your stove and bring to a boil. You can also use a kettle, it's faster and cheaper if you have one.
2. If you're using whole wheat pasta it's going to take consideriably longer, so calculate 15-25 minutes for that kind and the usual 5-7 minutes for regular pasta.
3. Wiggle a piece of pasta around a fork and try it first before draining the water. It should be on the border of not cooked, as it shall cook perfectly within the next 10 minutes of preparing this dish.
4. Pre chop 2 cups of your cherry tomatoes, chop the largest ones.
5. Slice your onion fairly thin and put those in a pan with a dash of olive oil.
6. Once that gets going and they start to change colour, add your chopped tomatoes, capers, part of your basil and let it all cook together for about 4-5 minutes.
7. In the meantime, give your drained pasta a little lift with the fork, just to make sure it's not sticking together. (Yes that's right, these are realtime directions)
8. Once you start to see a small amount of sauce, place the rest of the tomatoes in the pan, uncut. Stir that for about another 2 minutes.
9. Now put your pasta in the pan with your sauce and give everything a good stir for a further minute or 2. Add another dash of oil and salt. Save the pepper for when it's on the table and you're ready to eat.
10. You're now ready to serve, well done, I can see the dish as we speak and it looks stunning!
11. Serve on to plates and decorate with some of your leftover basil.

TIP: You can eat this with a nice red wine or if you're like myself and don't drink much then go for a naturally carbonated ice cold water.

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Conclusion: If pasta grew on trees, I'd probably be a pastatarian!

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All recipes and photos are made by us. Us as in, 2 plant based freaks that basically cook all day long and wonder why our bathroom weight scales are going up in numbers! But we deal with it, in fact we blame it all on you!

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Thanks for your time my fellow Steematarians, if you liked the recipe, please feel free to show some love. If you don't like food that reminds you of eating your shoe laces with ketchup, and you prefer playing baseball with cactus flowers then let me know in the comments below!

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