I bought a huge package of grape tomatoes at Costco last week and we weren’t getting through them fast enough to use them all up before they went soft, so I scoured the internet for a recipe I could use them in. A couple of people had variations on this pasta with grape tomatoes roasted in balsamic vinegar, and that sounded like it might work.

While I got some water boiling for spaghetti noodles, I halved about 2 cups worth of cherry tomatoes (what I had left), added some balsamic vinegar, minced garlic, and olive oil to them, and then stirred them to coat them evenly. Instead of washing one of my mixing bowls, all of which were dirty and in the sink at the time, I took a big Glad-ware container out of the cupboard, figuring it was sufficiently bowl-like to do the job. When I picked the container up to pour the tomatoes into a baking dish, I had a huge mess all over the counter. Balsamic and oil everywhere.

After cleaning up the mess and getting the tomatoes into the oven, I inspected the container and saw that the corner was riddled with little holes!

I guess I must have melted it in the microwave last time I was reheating something. Two thoughts occurred to me. First, ew, I probably ate melted plastic. Second, I need to get some good plastic containers for food storage and stop relying on the little Glad things.

After the tomatoes were soft and slightly browned, I put them in a bowl with two cups of fresh spinach leaves, and then dumped some spaghetti noodles on top. The heat from the tomatoes and pasta wilted the spinach down to almost nothing. I added shredded asiago cheese bit by bit until I had about half a cup mixed in.

We had this as a side dish with a rotisserie chicken, and I was disappointed with it. I like the flavor of balsamic vinegar very much, but it seems weird in a hot pasta dish. It’s got too much sweetness. I think this would be highly successful as a cold pasta salad, but I didn’t get the chance to try it cold because the next day when I went to have leftovers, I knocked the bowl off the shelf of the fridge and had a floor full of pasta and squished tomatoes.