The Noodle Crisis

I am a lover of pasta. There I said it. I really do love pasta. I know it is loaded with carbs and I know it basically going straight from my plate to my thighs--do not pass go, do not collect $200. Straight to the T-zone.   I know this, but I still love it. I have tried a couple of different "healthier"  varieties of pasta, you know ... whole-grain pasta. We have made some fairly good recipes with whole wheat penne, garden spirals, and quinoa spaghetti. They were all okay, but I absolutely prefer regular semolina pasta. I'm sure it has zero nutrition and like I said is contributing to the ever-present enemy we all despise ... FAT.

I also very much love just about every variety of Asian noodle I have ever tasted. WOW.  Stir fry, lo mein, pancit, and all the other deliciousness!  Asian noodles are sometimes made from rice or beans or semolina... ha ha.. They are all very tasty, too.

Anyway, I am concerned about the noodle crisis we are in right now. Noodle crisis, you ask? Yes. People out there on Pinterest are making noodles out of zucchini, eggplant, asparagus, carrots, and cucumbers. No. just no. Please --those are not noodles.  Those are thinly sliced veggies..... Veggies that taste great WITH pasta. Am I right? Oh, and the "new noodle" variety that brought me to declare this  a full-blown noodle crisis...today I was innocently reading a magazine (it shall remain un-named), and they presented a recipe for sweet potato noodles. GASP!! what... no please... say it isn't so. You mean you are going to try to make a noodle out of sweet potatoes. Leave them alone...they don't deserve such humiliation.

Please, no noodles made out of sweet potatoes. Please!!  For one, how do you cook that so it doesn't turn into a pile of mashed sweet potatoes? How would that even hold up? Oh, wait... do you eat them raw made into those wiggly spaghetti strands? Eewwwwwww!!  Raw sweet potatoes. No. Please. This is definitely a crisis. It was painful, but I looked at the directions for making sweet potatoe noodles --you blanch them for 1-2 minutes... so that's the way you do it, but still no. NO!!!!!!!

Give me semolina please. That al dente squish a perfectly cooked ziti tube with some cheesey tomato sauce... yum... It just can't be beat. We must stand firm noodle lovers of the world. Stand firm friends. Stand.

Disclaimer: This post is "mostly" well, 75% for fun...25% in defense of "real" pasta. And for the record, I have never tried noodles made out of vegetables, so I don't actually know if they are SUPER yummy or NOT super yummy. When and if I ever try them, I will be sure to let you know what I think of them. But, I can make a pretty strong prediction that sweet potato noodles will not ever (EVER) be on my plate.  Whew... glad that is off my chest.