Aglio e Olio — The Pasta That Said Winter Is Over

One year. Fifty-two weeks since I started writing. Fifty-two weeks of Chloe and Jayden and Lorraine and Earline's skillet and the Waffle House and Nashville State and Tanisha and Mr. Gerald and Marcus's absence and the fridge museum and the parking lot where I cry and the kitchen where I cook and the life — this small, loud, beautiful, difficult life — that I am building one week at a time.

If I could talk to the Sarah who started this — the one standing in the kitchen at 5 AM a year ago, waiting for something to break open — I'd say: it broke open. You broke it open. With a $50 tip and a guest check and a Goodwill backpack and the kind of stubbornness that your grandmother gave your mother who gave it to you. You broke it open, and now you're standing in the middle of something growing, and it's not finished, and it won't be for a while, but it's GROWING. You are growing. Your kids are growing. The cornbread is getting closer. Everything is getting closer.

The semester continues. Spring break is next week — which for me means extra shifts at Waffle House, because dental hygiene students don't go to Cancun, they go to work. But Chloe is off from pre-K, so Mama will have both kids full-time, and I'll make it up to her with cornbread and gratitude and the promise that this is temporary. Everything is temporary. The hard parts. The tired parts. The standing-at-the-counter-eating-cold-spaghetti-at-11-PM parts. All temporary. The permanent part is this: I am a woman who went to school. I am a woman who will finish. I am a woman whose daughter calls her "smart" on a Valentine and whose son calls his uncle "Keh-ba" and whose mother makes cakes for every grade and whose grandmother lives in a cast iron skillet on top of the fridge.

Spring is here. Real spring this time — the Nashville kind, with dogwoods blooming white along every street and the Bradford pears smelling terrible and beautiful at the same time. The air is warm enough to open windows. Chloe found a ladybug on the porch and named it "Sparkle" and watched it fly away and said, "Bye, Sparkle! Come back!" She says that to everything that leaves — ladybugs, balloons, the ice cream truck. "Come back." She still believes things come back. Maybe some things do.

I made a spring vegetable pasta this week — penne with asparagus, peas, lemon, garlic, parmesan, olive oil. Light, bright, the kind of meal that says: winter is over. We survived it. We ate soup for five months and now we eat things with lemon and everything feels possible. Chloe picked out the asparagus. Jayden ate the peas one at a time, individually, like each pea was a separate course. I twirled my pasta on the new spatula (it's multipurpose) and watched the sun come through the kitchen window — the same window I stood at a year ago — and the light was different. Not brighter. Fuller. Like the window was the same but the person looking through it had expanded, and the light had more to illuminate now.

Year one: complete. Year two starts next week. And I'm ready. Not perfect, not fearless, not finished. But ready. Ready the way a crocus is ready — not waiting for the cold to end, just pushing up through it, because that's what you do. You push. You grow. You bloom in spite of everything. You feed people. You keep going. One week at a time. One cornbread at a time. One life at a time.

This pasta is what Week 52 tasted like — bright, simple, alive with something green after all those months of soup and darkness. When Chloe pulled the asparagus off the shelf at the store, I knew that was the dish: nothing heavy, nothing complicated, just garlic and olive oil and the first real colors of spring. It felt right to end year one with a meal that asked so little and gave back so much. Here’s how we made it.

Spring Aglio e Olio with Asparagus & Peas

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

• 12 oz penne pasta
• 1 bunch asparagus (about 1 lb), tough ends snapped off, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1 cup frozen peas, thawed
• 6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
• Zest and juice of 1 large lemon
• 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
• 1/2 cup reserved pasta cooking water
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Fresh parsley or basil for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Salt the water. Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. The water should taste like the sea — this is your only chance to season the pasta itself.
2. Cook the pasta. Add penne and cook according to package directions until al dente. In the last 3 minutes of cooking, add the asparagus pieces to the pot. Before draining, scoop out 1/2 cup of the starchy pasta water and set aside. Drain pasta and asparagus together.
3. Build the sauce. While the pasta cooks, warm the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-low heat. Add the sliced garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook gently, stirring often, for 3–4 minutes until the garlic is golden and fragrant. Do not let it brown too dark — you want mellow and sweet, not bitter.
4. Bring it together. Add the drained pasta and asparagus directly to the skillet. Add the peas. Pour in the reserved pasta water a splash at a time, tossing everything together over medium heat until a light, silky sauce clings to the pasta, about 2 minutes.
5. Finish with brightness. Remove from heat. Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, and Parmesan. Toss well. Taste and adjust salt, pepper, and lemon as needed.
6. Serve. Divide into bowls and top with extra Parmesan and fresh herbs if using. Eat it while the sun is still coming through the window.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 520 | Protein: 18g | Fat: 20g | Carbs: 68g | Fiber: 6g | Sodium: 310mg