Creamy Tomato Mushroom Pasta

This weekend, I had one thing on my mind: comfort food.

and tea. Lots of tea.

It’s probably not the proper thing for me to admit as a grown ass woman (sorry, it sounded much better than typing “adult”), but I absolutely love snow storms. They always bring me back to my childhood. I remember going to bed super excited and as soon as my eyes opened in the morning, I’d rush over to the window to peek out. Actually, come to think of it, I’d usually wake up in the middle of the night and peek out the window to “check on things”.

In the morning, I was either 1) super disappointed and let down by the weather man/woman or 2) CRAZY EXCITED because school was cancelled!

I bet you can guess how I felt waking up on Friday morning. I screamed to Eric, “let’s go play in the snow later!” As you can guess, he did not share my same enthusiasm.

We’ve had very little snowfall over the past few winters, so it was nice to get a good dose of snow for once. As a child growing up in the Maritimes, snow storms are in my blood. Don’t get me wrong, I’m counting down the days until spring, but sometimes a good snow day is just what you need to feel alive again.

Cozy weather called for clean-out-my-pantry comfort food. This pasta dish was thrown together based on what I had kicking around and it turned out good enough to share. The best part is, it came together in about 20 minutes or so. Easy comfort food…my favourite kind.

Quick and Easy Creamy Tomato Mushroom Pasta

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Yield: 3 servings

Ingredients:

• 2-3 servings of pasta (I used fusili)
• 1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 small sweet onion, diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 8-oz sliced cremini mushrooms (2-3 cups sliced)*
• 1-1.5 cups canned diced tomatoes, to taste
• 3/4 cup fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 1/4-1/3 cup nutritional yeast, to taste
• 1.5 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp dried thyme
• 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
• 1/2 tsp fine grain sea salt, or to taste

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add in your pasta and cook until Al dente, about 7-10 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat a large skillet or wok over medium heat. Sauté the garlic and onion in the olive oil for about 5 minutes, or until translucent.

3. Stir in the sliced mushrooms and diced tomato and cook for another 8-10 minutes or so over medium-high heat, until some of the water cooks off.

4. Stir in the fresh basil, nutritional yeast, tomato paste, oregano, thyme, red pepper flakes. Add salt to taste. Simmer for another 5 minutes or so and adjust seasonings to taste if desired.

5. Drain pasta and add back into the pot. Stir in the pasta sauce, heat, and serve immediately withCheezy Garlic Bread if you’d like.

I was excited to find out over the weekend that I’ve been nominated for the best Healthy Cooking Blog award over on The Kitchn. If you enjoy Oh She Glows and think my blog is worthy of such an award, I would love your vote of support! You can sign in with Twitter, Facebook, or if you have one, your Kitchn account. Be sure to check out the other categories too.