Stream of Pastaness

One of the fastest homemade dishes is the pasta. You boil up pasta in a pot while sautéing some vegetables and/or meat together with some flavors in a side pan. At the end, you deglaze the pan with some acid and scrape the bits of flavor off the bottom. You drain the pasta at al dente simultaneously, saving the slightest bit of pasta water and pouring the pasta into the sauté and cooking everything together briefly to marry the flavors of your sauté and your little pan sauce together through the magic of the acid and the pasta water. This also crisps the pasta slightly while keeping that al dente inner texture intact. You've now got a nice hearty meal, tasty to all, customizable to most and scalable to one or many. It even will make remarkably consistent leftovers and can be eaten hot or cold. You can be as creative as you desire. You can use whole wheat pasta and olive oil or nonstick cooking spray to help make the dish as healthy as you'd like. Or you could add a little extra sparkle and marry the main meat with a spicy sausage version of itself like chicken and chicken chorizo, or turkey breast with turkey Italian sausage – you get the idea. Deglaze with vinegar to get a peppery finish, or with wine to get an aromatic and subtle finish. It's whatever you like, whatever your mood, a thousand different versions. I could go on, but I think you get it.

(Plus, I wrote this as quickly and efficiently as I could, and I still think I could have made a delicious pasta dinner for four for you in less time. So I guess I should shut up and leave you to it.)