Just one of those days

My boss sent a wave of procedural destruction through the office that led to angry, curse filled interdepartmental IMs. How was your Thursday?
It was much more pleasant today to think about the potential of one day, maybe, planting my squashes and getting my kitchen table back. I mean, it beats work. And since I work in a library, I discovered that there are 2 books from my to-read list that are not only at the library, they're online! I checked one of them out today, and I'm already enjoying it.
I think I'll need to talk with the others in my house about this project a bit more, though. They went grocery shopping today for just three things (already putting us slightly over budget--although we're feeding 3 people until mid-May, so I don't feel as bad about that as I should) and came home with lots and lots of things. *Sigh* Included among them: mangoes (which must be coming from South America at this time of year), bananas (!) and apples. (To be fair, the Boy bought the apples and bananas himself, and he's not really constrained by any of my challenge. So I just won't eat them.) I had asked Shane to pick up some penne pasta for dinner tonight and what did he do? Got all kinds of different pastas. Not realizing that we already had three boxes of lasagna noodles, he bought three more! So we're having lasagna sometime in the next couple of weeks. Maybe several somtimes.
Lesson learned. I do most of the food shopping for us anyway, but I think I'll have to be more careful about planning and preparing in advance so that I'll really be the only one (at least for me and Shane--Drew needs to start buying his own food, grumble, grumble, grumble...) and we'll stick to our budget and my principles better.
The only complaint I've really heard from Shane, though, was about carrots. When he pulled them out to cook with the other night he called me into the kitchen, flopping a carrot around. "Look at this! This is not good! It's not a good carrot! It's obviously been in someone's root cellar all winter. I feel I have a right to complain if my quality is going to go down." I asked (reasonably, I feel) what it really matters since it was going to get cooked up anyway? He couldn't really answer that one.
Anyway, tonight's meal was actually more like an idea of a meal. I think of it as Pasta With Stuff. The 'stuff' can be absolutely any green vegetable you want. (I think green works best because it's more present than, say, carrots or red peppers.) I used the last of our asparagus (please, please let there be more at the market this weekend!) and it was super easy.
To make:
Penne pasta
Garlic (the more, the better--three cloves turned out to be not enough)
Asparagus
Butter
Basil
Parmesan
And that's it. Cook the pasta, and all the other stuff except the cheese in another skillet, then combine and mix in the parmesan. Really good and really fast. I had the veggies waiting for the noodles to finish cooking.
Also, a little note: I love basil. Love, love, love it. For Christmas, my best friend gave me a basil-scented candle. Her sister made fun of her ("A candle? That's what you give to someone you work with!") but she knew I'd love it. Basil is probably my favorite herb, and it's so versatile! So be prepared, when I do put recipes on here, to see lots of basil.
The dog is staring at me and I have absolutely no idea why. Does she disapprove of me getting seconds?