Quick Italian One-Pot Noodle Bowl

I made this quickly and easily for dinner the other night and even the pasta "disliking" man in my life was thrilled with it.

One-Pot Italian Noodle Bowl

Ingredients:

• About 6 Cups Dried Egg Noodles
• 4-6 Cups Vegetable Stock
• Salt and Pepper
• 1 Tablespoon Olive oil
• 1 Onion
• 2-3 Cloves Garlic
• 1 Tablespoon Basil
• 1 Tablespoon Oregano
• 1 Tablespoon Pesto (Optional)
• 6-12 Ounces Frozen Chopped Spinach, thawed
• 1-2 Bell Peppers
• 1/2 Cup Fresh diced tomatoes
• 1 Can Diced Tomatoes, undrained
• Parmesan Cheese
• Fresh Parsley Leaves
• Shredded cooked Chicken, or Turkey or Meatballs (Optional)

Instructions:

1. Place a large stock pot on the stove over medium heat and add the olive oil to the pot. Let the olive oil heat for about a minute.
2. Dice or mince the onion and garlic. Add to heated pot, season with salt and pepper and saute for about 10 minutes until soft but not overly browned.
3. Dice the bell peppers and tomatoes.
4. Once onions are soft and slightly translucent, add the bell peppers, fresh tomatoes, canned tomatoes and juice, chopped spinach, vegetable stock, basil, oregano, and pesto. Turn heat up to high and cover with a lid.
5. Allow the pot to come to a slow boil, about 5-10 minutes. 
6. Remove lid, add dried egg noodles and stir so the egg noodles are submerged. Replace pot lid and continue to heat over medium high for 10-15 minutes until noodles are cooked through.
7. If desired add shredded cooked chicken or turkey, or premade meat balls during last 3 minutes of cook time to heat through.
8. Once noodles are cooked to desired doneness, ladle a serving into a warmed bowl, garnish with shredded Parmesan cheese and parsley.
9. Goes great with some fresh bread or buns.

Enjoy!

Notes:

This is a supper that can go from not being started to done in about 30 minutes. Great for nights after work. If you are really pressed for time you can skip the step of sauteing the onion and garlic before everything else, to do this simply add all of the ingredients except the garnish, meat and noodles to the pot, bring to a boil and then follow the recipe from there. I only saute the onions before everything else because I am not a huge fan of raw to lightly cooked onion. Something about the texture of it just gets to me. So I like to really cook my onions down in things I plan to eat but if you aren't bothered by raw onion texture then go ahead and skip that step and get dinner on the table even faster.

Other Places:

Something traditional:

Sweet and Sour Sauce