Five Great Fall Pasta Dishes for your Weekend Inspiration

Last week we brought you some ideas that make use of the fall vegetables and will help you warm up on a cold day. Over the course of the week we made the eggplant dish and also tried the turkey chili (we'll bring you the post for that in a few days). But you know what? We love pasta. You knew that. And we've been kind of short on pasta lately.

We'll be heading to China in a few weeks (stay tuned for some blogging from another continent!) and delicious Italian pasta will be pretty hard to come by, so we're going to go on a pasta splurge this week to get our fill before we go, and so we'll probably be making some of these recipes. Hopefully you find them interesting, and if you end up making one, take a picture and let us know about it!

Butternut Squash Mac and Cheese from Naturally Ella:
Umm...seriously? This sounds awesome, and while not necessarily Italian, seems like a pretty great way to eat Mac & Cheese and still feel healthy while doing it. Plus, you're making use of the fall favorite butternut squash.

Shrimp Pasta with Oven Dried Tomatoes from Annie's Eats:
If you've never tried oven dried tomatoes, you should give this recipe a shot. It's a great way to get the best out of the tomatoes that are no longer at the peak of their ripeness. Plus since the fall brings cold weather, it's not that big of a deal to run the oven for a few hours. We'll make this or something very similar because the oven dried tomatoes are a great fall treat.

Pasta with Smothered Cauliflower and Saffron from Serious Eats:
Yes, saffron is expensive, and that's the reason we've never done anything with it. But it may be worth it to give this a try (plus with the rest we can make some delicious arroz con pollo). Cauliflowers are coming into their fall glory and cooking them at high heat like this will give them a great nutty flavor. Complimenting that flavor with pasta is an Italian favorite

Baked Ziti from The Curvey Carrot:
How can you leave baked ziti out of this line up? It's a simple, traditional, go to pasta dish that's hard to justify during the summer when turning on the oven needs to be avoided and thus perfect for the fall. The trick is to cook the pasta way under time before putting it in the oven, and the result will be perfectly al dente quills of pasta topped with a delicious crispy crust.

Chicken and Sundried Tomato Pasta from The Healthy Foodie:
It's debatable whether this is really a fall pasta dish, since you can pretty much get sundried tomatoes and chicken whenever. But, the CSA this week was featuring parsley, so perhaps this works? Regardless, chicken and sundried tomato are a great combination and this looks really easy to pull together, so why not?

Have a fall pasta idea that we should try? Let us know about it in the comments!