I like olives and tomatoes.

I kind of don't want to wait for October 22 to start shooting material for a supposed documentary of sorts so I figured I'd probably start shooting now. After all it's only less than a month til the 2 week Indochina adventure. To motivate myself I am also going to make a small trailer... Yknow, it'll motivate me to come up with something cos I already have a trailer for something that hasn't even been shot yet. HAHA

Well anyway yeah I couldn't go through my 18th century Britain reading thing cos I haven't posted the recipe for what I cooked for lunch today. So to those who have spare ingredients inside their house, this is a nice simple one from the pasta side of things. Pardon the crude measurements.

3 small tomatoes or 2 medium ones, blanched and peeled

1/4 bulb red onion, coarsely chopped

2 medium-sized/3 small cloves of garlic (or 2 tsps of garlic paste)

2 1/2-3 handfuls of tri-color spiral/rotini pasta (you can use ruote, shells, etc as long as it's not the string type like spaghetti and fettucine, etc.)

2-3 spoon fulls of champignons (or any other mushrooms, but I recommend these for this dish)

2 spoons of chopped black olives (I think I used more cos I love olives :D)

dashes of herbs: majorjam and thyme (or just use those mixed herb seasonings)

pinches of white pepper

crumbled feta cheese

1. Boil the pasta in salted water (just use about a teaspoon of salt). You can blanch the tomatoes together with the pasta if you want, which was what I did. So while the pasta is cooking, peel the tomatoes and slice them into quarters.
2. Drain the pasta and save a little of the water, like half a cup. But you're not gonna use all of that (just about 2 spoons or 1 tablespoon actually). Set the pasta aside and start heating the sauce pan at low heat.
3. Keep the low heat on and pour in a little olive oil, about 3 tsps or 1 1/2 spoon, and add in garlic and then follow it with the onions and mushrooms as the garlic starts to turn golden. Sautee until golden brown/somewhat tender but not very.
4. Then add the tomatoes, trying to crush them a bit as you stir everything. Add about 4 dashes of whole majorjam leaves and 2 dashes of thyme. Stir.
5. Add a little of the water you set aside earlier, and then let it simmer for like 5 minutes. Three minutes into it, add the olives and white pepper. By little I mean, as mentioned previously just around one tablespoon. Because you still have water from the tomatoes and in my case, I like to add add a bit of the water from the bottled olives. You don't have to wait til the 5 minutes are up as well, if it starts turning really dry you can opt to add a bit more water or proceed to the next step.
6. Stir everything and then pour the pasta into the sauce pan. Stir again. Set into a bowl and add crumbled feta cheese, just 2-3 cubes would do really.

So that makes 1 generous serving and less than 10 minutes to prepare (minus the pasta boiling, but even tho it will take less than 20 minutes.) The herbs' flavors should be present but not very strong. If you're not going to use feta, add in a pinch or two of salt to the sauce before you start to simmer it.