Resolutions, Good Intentions and a Recipe

I was back at the gym again this morning, doing my workout this time on my own.  I missed my son!  But it gave me time to reflect.  It has been interesting this year reading everyone's new year's blogs and hearing what kinds of resolutions, goals and challenges people are doing.

For myself I have some long term goals focused around a big family reunion this summer in Colorado and our 20th wedding anniversary on coming up on 12-12-12: we are thinking of taking a big trip to celebrate - no concrete plans yet but we are leaning towards an exotic, warm destination - which puts visions of beaches and bathing suits in my mind... 

So I have a plan for working out for the next 6 months down on paper, and a plan for healthy eating is taking shape.  No hard core dieting as of yet - at the moment I am doing the PCRM Vegan Kickstart to get myself back into making healthy plant based dinners for my family, and refocus on healthy low fat meals for myself.

I'm not following their menu plan to the letter but using it for inspiration.  My goal each day is to have a healthy breakfast (a green smoothie or cereal with plant milk), a healthy lunch (right now mostly soup) and then try a new recipe for dinner from the PCRM menu plan or somewhere else.

On Tuesday I made a delicious and super easy oven roasted pepper pasta sauce inspired by a recipe in "Vegan Italiano" by Donna Klein (one of my go-to cookbooks!) and I promised my mom I would post it.  So here you go:

Oven Roasted Pepper Pasta Sauce
(makes about 6 servings)

1 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes
2 red peppers and 1 orange or yellow pepper, roughly chopped
5 garlic cloves, pressed or finely chopped
2 T olive oil
1 T balsamic vinegar
1 tsp each dried rosemary and dried summer savory (or oregano, thyme, etc.)
coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 450 F (220 C).  Put all the ingredients in an ovenproof casserole or baking pan, stir well.  Roast for about 30 minutes (while you boil water and cook your pasta of choice - we had this with 500g of tagilatele).  Give the sauce a stir once or twice while cooking.  When done, mash about half the sauce mixture roughly (or puree half of it with an immersion blender) and then top the pasta with the sauce.  Yum!  This recipe would be very easy to double or triple for a large group - maybe a meal for in Colorado?