Thursday, February 24, 2011

For The Love Of Pasta



I once tried the South Beach Diet. I never made it past the initial two-week phase. It was awful. Nightmarish. Torture. Giving up the sugar was hard enough, but CARBS?! It's too much to ask! My body went through shock and my hands would shake and I was a veritable be-yotch. John was so happy I caved and snarfed down a bowl of cavatelli's one night. End of diet. You see, pasta is a staple in our house and we're always looking for different ways to fix it. This last meal we made is reason enough to never do the South Beach Diet again. And it's a pretty healthy dish. It's a recipe by Lidia called Pasta with Baked Cherry Tomatoes. Basically a dish consisting of the pasta of your choice tossed with an olive oil and garlic sauce, topped with baked cherry tomatoes, a generous serving of pecorino cheese, fresh basil and topped with small dollops of ricotta. It was wonderful! I especially loved the hot pasta with the cool ricotta mixed together. Delish! The baked tomatoes roasted with olive oil, red pepper flakes and bread crumbs were fantastic with it. Kudos to John for finding the recipe. I didn't expect it to taste near as good as it did but John has made me a believer Lidia's recipes, thanks dear :)

Sadie helping mix the tomatoes and seasonings.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Wordless Wednesday: Child At Heart


yes, my head is cut off here, but the image is kinda funny :) we both have same pose, both of us lovin' the trampoline at her friend's bday party! hey, it was fun!

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Wind Chill Says It's 2 Degrees.....


..... so this is what you do to pass the time! Dress up time with Mommy and Daddy! Isn't he a good Daddy??! Sadie had a blast. :)


A good sport!

Her "pouty" face.

Apparently, "just like mommy".

Taking the babies for a walk.

Happy girl!

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Best Meals Of The Week


Nothing says "I love you" like tuna, salmon and eel in "special sauce".

My original plan for Valentines Day was to make a complicated Julia Child recipe. I'm sure glad I tend to like the easy way out and opted for take out sushi! It was perfect in every way. We hadn't had it in forever so it was blissful and perfect for that "special" V-Day meal. Even had miso soup to go with it. Ahhhh....... so much better than the 3+ hours I would have spent preparing that original meal and eating at 10 pm, stressed out and starving!

A truly delicious combination (and not near as time consuming as the last one).

The second meal was another Pioneer Woman pizza. She calls it her "Favorite Pizza". The last one we made was a gourmet pizza, this one was much simpler, and although we loved the last one, we liked this one even better. Something to be said about simplicity. Roasted eggplant, grape tomatoes and garlic over fresh mozzarella and sprinkled generously with grated parmesan cheese. Bake until browned, bubbly and begging to be devoured, while watching episode after episode of Glee. Now, THAT'S a Friday night!

Monday, February 14, 2011

A Blue Valentines Day



Blues Clues of course. I felt very mom-like yesterday as I was putting together valentines for Sadie's class at daycare. School valentines already?! It was fun though, and the theme was none other than from her favorite show..... Blues Clues! I'm in my glory whenever I get to break out my paper punches, stamps and ribbons! I don't really think 2-year-olds will really appreciate my handmade name tags, but I do!


I also made these yummy little pretzel/hershey kisses/m&m numbers yesterday for Valentines Day too. I might have posted about this at Christmas, not sure. But all you need to do to make them is take waffle pretzels and top them with hershey kisses of your choice (we used regular, hugs, and my favorite.... caramel) and stick them in the oven at 350 degrees for a couple minutes, then when they come out, plop an m&m in your holiday color in the center and VOILA! A very tasty, very addictive little treat. Especially the caramel ones, trust me on this. Make them! You can't go wrong with sweet and salty.


And if those weren't enough, I wanted to try out my new heart shaped cookie cutters and also had a box of red velvet cake lying around, so I made cake hearts. Just like cake balls (cake and frosting mixed together) but you shape them in the cookie cutter, then freeze them for a little bit to harden up, then dip them in some candy melts or chocolate in the color of your choice. YUM!

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Monday, February 7, 2011

No Ordinary Pizza n' Beer


Fancy schmancy pizza and beer, complete with candle light, doesn't get better than that.

Oh Pioneer Woman, can you do no wrong? Thanks to you, I made my first completely homemade pizza- dough and all! Guess what I learned? Pizza dough is super easy. Why did I resist for so long? Why the fear? And for nothing, I tell you! This is PW's Potato Leek Pizza and it is delicious and something you aren't going to be able to order at your typical pizza joint. I would never have thought of putting potatoes on a pizza, but it works. You slice them paper thin, with a very sharp knife if you have mad knife skills, but for the rest of us, a mandoline comes in handy. And I actually had a mandoline in the basement! A long time ago on the yellow brick road, I worked at a magazine and would help photograph products for their review section. One shoot was about kitchen utensils and at the end of the shoot, all the products were up for grabs. I raced in to grab the coveted mandoline and skipped out like a school girl with the latest issue of Tiger Beat (dated myself, didn't I?) back to my desk. I was SO happy to get this uber cool freebie that it only took me 6 years to use! But let me tell you what a life saver it is because I think it might be near impossible to slice things that thin by hand. By my hand, anyways. Sorry, tangent. Back to pizza. So, you put a layer of potatoes on the dough, fresh mozzarella, leeks, parmesan, bacon.... and crumbled goat cheese. Oh my my my, it was wonderful! An added bonus is that the dough recipe makes two pizza crusts, so one is in my freezer and I've already been eyeing her Favorite Pizza Recipe which has roasted eggplant and grape tomatoes on it......... mmmmm......


To compliment our gourmet pizza, we paired it with some gourmet beer. Or so I learned as I paid for it. I actually thought they charged me for two 6-packs. Nope. Turns out it's a small brewery on Nantucket and they only make small batches of this stuff. However, that being said, it's a great beer and 3/4 of one made me completely loopy happy so I consider it money well spent.

Ready to be cooked. A thing of beauty! Look at all that BACON and CHEESE! Two of the things that make everything better.


Leeks are beautiful. Tasty, too. Tastier when sauteed in bacon grease. Aw yaaaaa.....

Me with my mandoline, making the thinnest potato slices ever made and enjoying it a lot because I had already cracked open that beer.