One Pot Wonder – Zucchini and Garlic Pasta Recipe

After spending a long day at the office, the last thing I want to do is slave over an oven for hours. Even though my office is about 15 feet from my kitchen, it’s still a chore to cook dinner. Since I don’t like to spend a long time cooking, and I want to spend as little time as possible doing dishes, I love a good one pot wonder!

I was thrilled when I found this zucchini and garlic pasta that I could make together in one pot. I’ve been looking for ways to incorporate more vegetables and less meat into my diet, and this is a real winner. It’s completely vegetarian and could be made vegan with a few simple alterations.

One Pot Wonder – Zucchini & Garlic Pasta

Ingredients

Directions

1.  In a large pot Add 4 1/2 cups of water
2. Add in uncooked pasta and all veggies
3. Bring to a boil over a medium-high heat
4. Continue cooking until all water is absorbed -about ten minutes
5. Remove Thyme.
6. Stir in 1 cup heavy cream and garnish with parm cheese.
7. Add to plate and garnish with as much parmesan as desired

To Make Vegan

You can easily make this recipe vegan by substituting the diary. For a vegan substitution for heavy cream try cashew cream. You can make a vegan parmesan cheese substitution with cashews, nutritional yeast, garlic powder, and sea salt.  Be sure to pay attention to the spaghetti you use for this recipe, as most are vegan, but some do contain eggs.

Make it Your Own

The fantastic thing about this dish is that you can really make it your own. If you’re not a fan of pepper are mushrooms, just take them out. Want to add more protein to it? Just add some grilled chicken. Want to make it low carb? Consider replacing the spaghetti with zucchini noodles and replacing the zucchini with artichokes – Yum!

Enjoying a Family Meal

The nice this about a one pot wonder is there are no side dishes to make. Because it’s pasta, there’s no need to make any bread or rolls to go along with this dish. Instead of spending all that extra time in the kitchen, you can spend it at the table enjoying a family meal. We like to take a few minutes before we start the meal to pray as a family and say what we are thankful for. Between slurps of delicious pasta we talk about what we did that day and plans for the next day.

Do you have a favorite one pot wonder recipe?