You can substitute cous-cous, rice, quinoa, potato, sweet potato, roast squash, lentils, ratatuoille, noodles, bulgur wheat, a leafy salad or barley for pasta.
Simply cook the veggies and meat in whatever way you’d usually cook them, and serve with a different side.
Fry onions and garlic, add meat (your choice) and your favourite veggies and simmer with a tin of tomatoes, some tomato puree (tomato paste), seasoning and herbs or spices of your choices. Serve with a side.
Options:
chilli con carne (minced beef, kidney beans, chilli and paprika)
spag bol (minced beef, red peppers, bay leaves)
curry (chicken, curry powder)
chicken or pork work well with rosemary
pork and sage
chicken and thyme
chicken and basil
This is pretty much what I came to post. You can start with dried beans if you’re enthusiastic and broke. But canned beans cook so much faster.
You can also do this on the stove-top; just brown the beef first, drain it, add the canned (or pre-cooked dried) beans and other crap (some Worcestershire sauce works well, too; and you can sub bottled BBQ sauce for the vinegar and molasses), and simmer for at least 30 minutes, but up to 2 hours doesn’t hurt.
I’d also like to offer up orzo as a pasta that isn’t really a classic “noodle pasta”. Sometimes when you think you are all pasta’d out, orzo can make a great change. It is a great “salad” pasta and the Greek Manestra is really unreasonably good.