Easy ain't the same as fast

There's probably a joke about the opposite sex in that title, but let's stick to food for now. Fast and easy are neither mutually agreeable nor exclusive. (Mrs. Johnson taught me the neither/nor, either/or trick there.)

Fast can be a 30-minute meal that requires extravagant kitchen equipment (read: hard to clean, if you even own it) and ingredients that you'll never finish off (who doesn't have half a celeriac root rotting in their crisper?!).

Easy can involve few ingredients, but several hours of invested time.

I went with the latter to create a pasta dish from scratch, using accessible ingredients that you likely have on hand or could easily use in the next day or two.

Whether fast or easy, no matter which way we go, let's never spend more time cleaning up than we did preparing the meal. (Read below for The Damage.)

For the pasta, follow the Joy of Cooking recipe. For the sauce, read on....

1 lb grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1-2 T olive oil
Sprinkle sea salt
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
5-6 sage leaves, julienned (optional)

Saute the tomatoes and garlic in the salt and olive oil for 10-15 minutes on low, or until the tomatoes have fully burst and the garlic is soft. Remove from heat and let sit. Prepare and cook the pasta. While it's cooking, return the sauce to a low heat and add sage leaves along with a ladle or two of the pasta water. Use a pasta fork (what the hell are those things called? you know what I mean... I hope) to remove the pasta from the water and finish cooking in the saute pan (about 1-2 more minutes) while mixing with the sauce.

SERVE yourself and three others AND EAT.

Goes well with a chilled 2009 Pinot Grigio on sale at Target for $15.99 per box.

Yum, right? You tell me. Try the sauce (maybe 20 minutes to prepare, beginning to end) on that bulk pasta you buy in 5-lb bags at Sam's Club. Wha? Only I do that?

What's the damage?

• Saute pan
• Chefs knife
• Cutting board
• Pasta pot
• Ladle
• Pasta fork
• Spatula
• Measuring cup
• Fork
• Pasta maker or rolling pin
• Board scraper

A few notes.

• To easily halve small tomatoes, place about 10 or 15 on your cutting board and rest your non-dominant hand across the top of them. Use a large chefs knife to slice horizontally between your hand and the cutting board. Call 911 if blood ensues.
• Grind your sea salt crystals and pepper corns as I use them. It creeps me out that pro chefs dip their fingertips into a bowl of salt, whether their hands are covered in raw chicken goo or not.
• Try growing sage, even indoors, even in winter. It's a great medium-light, low-maintenance plant that looks and tastes great.

My kids, Georgie Too Too and The Monkey, both know I like to cook, but they must have known I was up to something special because they both hovered nearby and watched the entire fiasco easy preparation from beginning to end. I can only wonder at what they were thinking. 'Why the hell is she taking pictures of her stove top?' 'She looks ridiculous in those chef clogs.' 'About time she changed my litter/took me for a walk/gave us some treats.'