Italian Beef Casarecce Soup

You will not regret making this! It's easy to make, filling, easily adapted to what you have on hand, and the best part is it tastes like you're eating a bowl of lasagna. It comes together in about 30 minutes, and requires very little prep. An easy weeknight meal that's sure to impress.

Soyrizo and Pepper Jack Cauliflower "Mac" and Cheese

Cauliflower has become increasingly popular. I've seen so many recipes ranging from pizza crust to macaroni and cheese that subs cauliflower for noodles. I've had cauliflower gratin before which is super similar to this recipe, and I wanted to switch up the flavor profile from the traditional cheddar. I love Soyrizo. If you don't know what it is, it's a vegan alternative to chorizo. Chorizo has a delicious taste, but the ingredients can be questionable depending on which kind you buy. It's also loaded with fat, and Soyrizo is a great alternative if you aren't vegetarian or vegan but want to cut out all the grease. I personally think when you have it with scrambled eggs and peppers with tortillas and beans on the side, you really won't notice the difference. The flavor is great, and it works really well in this dish since the cheese is already so rich on it's own.

Baked Ziti with Meat Sauce

Oh my goodness this is so delicious. This week was all about using up leftover ingredients. I had a big hunk of whole milk mozzarella, and a container of ricotta. I used some of the ricotta to make rolled eggplant, but had almost an entire container left. I didn't have lasagna noodles on hand, but I always have a few boxes of penne.

Ricotta Filled Eggplant

I'm on an Italian food kick this week, mainly because I bought a lot of eggplant and I have fresh basil in my garden! This recipe comes together fast and is really filling, would be the perfect dish if you do Meatless Mondays.

(sorry for the picture quality, snapped this right before sunset)

Quick and Easy Mashed Potato Pancakes

Last year Isla was a newborn for St. Patrick's Day, so I didn't cook and we didn't celebrate. Now that she's a toddler I wanted to have some fun and cook the traditional Irish-American corned beef and cabbage with a couple sides. This resulted in too many mashed potatoes for a family of three. I like to make leftovers a little different the next day, and these potato pancakes were a fun way of changing up the meal from the previous night. Best part is you can fry a bunch up, then reheat the leftovers the next morning with scrambled eggs. Yum!

Crock Pot Enchilada Casserole

Apparently it's fall, but in Southern California it's hot. In the 90's hot, which is exactly when I get out the crock pot. During the winter when it's cold (again, Southern California, so like 60 degrees cold) I look forward to big pots of hot soup and doing the dishes because it warms me up. But when it's hot like this the kitchen is the last place I want to be. The great part about this meal is it can be made 100% with food from the pantry. The chicken and cheese are both optional, but if you have them on hand it really adds a nice change in texture to this dish.

5 Ingredient Homemade Mac n Cheese

Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with the stuff in the blue box, but homemade macaroni and cheese is completely different and more satisfying in my opinion. The good news is, it's basically the same amount of ingredients (pasta, cheese, butter, milk) this recipe just adds flour! You can prepare it in one pot, so you aren't making more of a mess. The fun thing about making it from scratch is the many variations you have available. You can make it the basic way, which I'll show, but you can also turn it into a casserole with a few mix-ins. Here is the basic recipe, and I'm guessing you already have these ingredients. 

Shrimp and Asparagus Risotto

A Day Late: Sprucing Up Packaged Foods

You must think that we eat a lot of canned food or something, but I promise that isn't the case. Every once in a while we have an "Oh man, that pasta bake thing from Domino's looks really good . . . " moment, and that's when packaged raviolis and other pastas come into play. I thought to myself: I have basil pesto ravioli, jarred sauce, fresh mozzarella that is about to expire, tomatoes, herbs that needed to get used like yesterday, and more shredded cheese. Why on earth would we go out and spend at least $10 on some pasta thing from a fast food place when I can whip it up in no time! Here's what you need:

Peppery Creamy Fettuccine with Grape Tomatoes

 I was watching an episode of Barefoot Contessa on Hulu the other day and found this recipe irresistible. What I liked most about it was the ingredients were already on hand, so all I had to do was boil water and cook the pasta. The rest is really too easy! I've tweaked the recipe a tad, but the ingredients are almost identical to the original. Enjoy!

Eggplant Stack, by Steve Martarano

I mentioned previously that Hubs and I ate at Martarano's at the Rio in Las Vegas. For an appetizer we shared the eggplant stack, and it was amazing. The ingredients are those found in eggplant Parmesan with the addition of balsamic vinegar and an arugula salad, yum! I saw an episode of the Real Housewives of Miami on Hulu, and one of the girls hosted a luncheon where they had a cooking lesson from chef Steve Martarano. That gave me the general idea of how to assemble this dish! I also found the actual recipe (or at least I'm assuming it was) on this website, check it out for yourself for the complete measurements!

Poached Eggs & Asparagus

I've been seeing this all over the food blogging world lately. Spring is the absolute perfect season to buy asparagus. It's so vibrant, crisp, and full of flavor. The combination of creamy eggs with crisp asparagus is to die for, especially when sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan cheese!

Grilled Chicken and Lemony Pasta Adapted from Pioneer Woman

Ree over at The Pioneer Woman posted this recipe the other day and I knew I just had to make it as soon as I could! I was already in possession of a live chicken (by live I mean two frozen breasts, not my own of course), a box of penne pasta, and 2 lemons. Seriously for the first time ever all I've needed to buy for a recipe was fresh basil. So money. I love every single one of Ree's recipes, only trouble is she's liberal with both butter and heavy cream. I'm not hating, those ingredients in combination stop my heart and make my stomach sing! Well, make my brain sing. Stomach's can't sing. To lighten up this amazing recipe I used whole wheat penne pasta, cut out the extra fat by skipping the heavy cream and half and half, and topped mine off with a balsamic glaze. I just love balsamic glaze; I don't really care what the dish is, if there's chicken involved it's gonna get showered with glorious glaze. I didn't snap any step by steps because I cannot even begin to compete with Ree's fabulous pictures. Her writing style is so amazing she makes me pee my pants a little every time I read a post of hers. Seriously check out the original recipe; if you aren't worried about the ingredients then by all means use a lot of butta' baby! ;-)

Stuffed Red Bell Peppers

Potato Love: Gratin Dauphinois

This was an amazing side dish that accompanied grilled chicken and spinach salads for hubby and me. Gratin Dauphinois is French gratin potatoes made with Beaufort cheese (which is French Gruyere) and a lot of heavy cream. I had 5 ounces of Swiss Gruyere and a vision for a healthier version of this fabulous French dish.

For traditional Gratin Dauphinois you would use a lot more butter and there wouldn't be a roux. Instead the butter and cheese is layered throughout the potatoes. I like my cheese ultra creamy so I just made a quick roux, which actually stretches your cheese quite a bit if you don't have enough for all the potatoes! 

Adobo Fire Roasted Margherita Pizza

Premade dough can be a lifesaver on nights where you want to cook, but don't want to cook for hours and do a lot of prep work. So grab some ready made dough and let's get to it!

No Excuses Breakfast

Give this simple and easy breakfast a shot, I'll even prove how awesome it is by listing the nutritional information.

• 286 calories
• 11.5 grams fat
• 15.7 grams protein
• 31.9 grams carbohydrates
• 8.3 grams fiber

Sun-dried Tomato & Artichoke Lasagna

Some of you might remember this post from January. Hubby had made us a pasta dish using sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, salami, rigatoni, vodka sauce, and a lot of cheese. We recently recreated this dish making a few adjustments. It came out wonderfully, and I finally have a recipe to share with you!

You will need:

• 9x13 in. casserole dish (3 quarts)
• 9 lasagna noodles
• 52 ounces (2 large jars) Vodka sauce
• 8 ounce jar sun-dried tomatoes (oil drained) chopped
• 14 artichoke hearts, chopped
• 32 ounces Italian cheese blend (we used 2 bags of Kraft cheese)
• pepperoni slices (as many as you want)

Mocha Cream Cheese Phyllo Triangles

A few words: chocolate, coffee, whipped cream cheese, phyllo dough.

Okay, now that you're trying to wrap your mind around that here you go:

Croque Monsieur

I'm sure as you all know by now, breakfast is my favorite. I hate getting up early to make it, but something like this is well worth the 2 cups of coffee to get me going! Croque Monsieur (crunchy mister) is a classic French sandwich made easily with Dijon mustard, bread, ham, Gruyere cheese, and butter. There are many ways to make this dish but I wanted to stick with the easy and traditional way for breakfast. To make it more of a breakfast item and less of a lunch or dinner meal I left the sandwiches open and served them with fried eggs. This sandwich can be made elaborately with a bechamel sauce and Gruyere blend. I've also seen them with cheese over the bread to get nicely brown and crunchy. Traditional is usually best in my book, so I stuck with simple grated cheese. Please, no bechamel sauce-making at 7 am.

Now I didn't have any Dijon, so I made up a batch of spicy honey mustard last night. For that, which is quite simple, you only need a few household items that I'm sure are in your pantry. The trick with mustard is letting is sit out. If you mix up the water and ground mustard and stick a spoonful in your mouth it will knock you on your ass. It's serious business. I was perched over a mixing bowl with watery eyes and cleared nasal passages while I was whipping this up. Unfortunately I didn't have a week for it to sit out and mellow before transferring it to the fridge, so it sat out on the counter overnight and then mixed a spoonful of the spicy mustard with plain yellow French's mustard to mellow it out.