Full of Goodness: Linden's Tart, Wegetables, and Pasta Casserole

To continue posting food cooked months ago, here are dinners from mid-may. We have a cauliflower and caramelized onion tart, which is both delicious and not new to my repetoire. This time I did change the crust though - instead of trimming the edges and being left with (1) pie scraps and (2) a cooked tart whose edges have receded (like Papa's ... is this too mean? I think it might be.), I folded the extra back down over the crust, so the edges are double-layered. This has two benefits - leaving it overhanging a bit is okay, since there's more holding up the extra crust, so you can get a less shrunken crust, and, more crust per slice.  Other delicious highlights of this meal are that you roast the cauliflower beforehand (roasted cauliflower is delicious) and caramelize the onions. Everything that goes into this tart is delicious on its own! And they go really well together.

I submit that this fulfills half the requirements of goodness, since it is vegetarian and has cauliflower, and that we can round up and call this goodness. (I know this is sort of cheating, since it also has enough cheese to kill a wild Xanbeast, but I use skim milk.) Plus, we ate it with asparagus and salad, because I believe in wegetables (and because knowledge is beliefs that are true, I also knowledge wegetables):

Concurrent to this, since there's some occasional waiting with this recipe (even once you've made the crust and it's chilling, you have cauliflower roasting in the oven, and onion caremelizing on the stove, neither of which require much attention. So, I made a second dinner, which I divided up into meal-sized portions and froze, because the life of a student sometimes calls for freezing.

So, because I was feeling slightly bad about the whole tart thing, I made a pasta casserole with a higher goodness-cheese ratio. This one features spinach and almonds. I know, you say, spinach? and almonds? with pasta? how could this work? How could it possibly taste good? Like this, gentle readers:

You add cheese (fresh mozzarella, because that's how we roll here and studentchez-Linden). It was slightly bland, but the addition of pepper and fresh basil post-thawing whenever I ate some improved matters, and it made me feel very virtuous, which is almost as good as feeling decadent.