Use Your Noodle!

We eat a fair amount of pasta at our house. I like to serve it with a homemade pesto or a veal ragu or even just a simple tomato sauce (last night's dinner). However, sometimes I give in to the request for plain buttered noodles. I'm not thrilled about it, but I do it in the name of keeping the peace.

When I an whipping up some buttered noodles for someone's lunch, I often don't cook the whole box of pasta -- and then my cabinets ends up being cluttered with quarter-full boxes of pasta of various shapes and cooking times. So that's no good.

Those nearly empty boxes of pasta were the inspiration for my craft column in Chicago Parent this month. With the help of my handy glue gun, we built this "noodle choo choo train" with pasta shapes that we already had at home. Who knows what you can make with what you have in your cabinet?