For further application of mushrooms and kale: whack them on pasta.

I've been having a problem with eating on time, or at all, really. Lunch has been sparse: peanut butter sandwiches and apples. I get home very hungry and moody and ready to yell until I get food, at which point I instantly go into reverse and come up with a whole new personality.

A while ago I was having exactly this kind of night. I needed immediate food, so I decided to run across the street (as opposed to the two blocks to the grocery store) to get some half and half for pasta with cream sauce.

Good so far. Still, at this point my palate doesn't just want a plate of pasta; it wants dinner, and that means vegetables. Fortunately, this also means we keep lots of vegetables handy to throw at our plates.

This was easy and ridiculously rich yet strangely full of fresh vegetables nonetheless. Hmm.

Penne with cream sauce, mushrooms, and kale

Cream sauce:
butter
flour
milk/cream
grating cheese
salt, pepper

I followed my own method here, so either follow that business or make an alternate cream sauce by any means you prefer. If you want a particularly voluptuous sauce, melt some goat cheese into the finished product. I used our vast never-ending parmesan block plus half and half for a sauce that was quite voluptuous enough.

Also, make a pan of pasta compatible with cream sauce. Any chunky pasta should work fine here, although corkscrewy kinds are probably the most fun.

When your sauce is done, combine it with drained pasta.

Veg:
olive oil/butter
garlic
mushrooms
kale
water

Try to time this so it's done just after the pasta and sauce. It will take somewhere in the 7-10 minute area, depending on how quickly you cook the garlic and mushrooms.

Warm olive oil in a decent sauté pan while you crush, peel, and chop up some garlic. I made slivers (smashed ones), but you can do any cut you want. You can also use as much as you want; I did four or five cloves. Toss the garlic into the oil and soften it slowly on low-medium heat.

Prep your mushrooms by cutting them into whatever shapes you want. I wanted thin slices. When the garlic is beginning to soften, tip the mushrooms into the pan. Stir to distribute oil, turn the heat up a touch, and continue to cook.

Now wash, destem, and chop as much kale as you want. You want a lot, since kale is a green and shrinks ridiculously. Chop it all into small pieces, so you won't get any stringy bits in the finished product.

When the mushrooms are cooked through, add your kale to the pan. Now you can either just cook until all your greens are wilted, or you can turn up the heat, splash some water into the pan, slap on the lid, and steam the whole business for a minute. Either way, it's done when the greens are wilted.

Eat: put a serving of pasta on a plate. Add copious vegetables. Pepper it if you want, or shred some cheese. Eat it.

I always think cream sauce wants red wine.