Salami Pasta

This recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawson's recipe for small pasta with salami, which I first saw on her show, Nigella Kitchen. I love watching her cook because she clearly takes so much pleasure in preparing and eating everything that she makes. She also doesn't seem overly concerned with whether or not something is authentic or fancy - just whether or not it tastes good. That's just my style!

I was excited to try this recipe because it looked easy and tasty. It's also a nice way to use up sliced salami, which we often have on hand and sometimes end up tossing because it sits around too long. I love the addition of the beans in this recipe too. I never would have thought to add them, but they taste great with the salami and they add great texture and protein to the dish. While the dish takes a bit of time to cook because I like leaving the sauce to simmer for a while (though you don't necessarily need to simmer it as long if you don't want to), the dish is very simple to throw together. This one's a definite keeper!

Breaded Goat Cheese Bites

I am kind of obsessed with cheese. I can have a seriously appalling amount of cheese in one sitting. Sometimes, good old cheddar just won't do and I want something even more indulgent. Enter goat cheese. And sometimes just goat cheese isn't enough, so I bread it and fry it. Oh, yeah.

Cauliflower Mac and Cheese

I have been watching a lot of British chefs on the Food Network lately. Nigella Lawson, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver have kind of taken over my TV. I love cooking shows, but they are even better when the hosts speak in lovely British accents (though I have to say it is really weird not hearing Gordon Ramsay drop a dozen f-bombs every half hour - his cookery course show is much cleaner than his others!). If you need me, I'll be practicing British cooking terms - like "spring onions" and "double cream" - in a terrible accent.

This cauliflower mac and cheese was inspired by Jamie Oliver's version from his cookbook Meals in Minutes. I kept wanting to make his version but forgetting to get crème fraîche and pancetta at the grocery store, so I just put together my own. I realize that this isn't technically mac and cheese, since I used fusilli and not macaroni, but if you're a stickler for that stuff, just sub in the elbow macaroni and you'll be good to go.

Spicy Italian Sausage Penne

Back-to-back pasta recipes on the blog this week! But I can't help it. I love pasta. It's so easy and versatile (and not to mention delicious). I have a couple of go-to pasta recipes (including my spaghetti alla puttanesca, which I can almost make in my sleep) but I also really like trying something new, or putting a new spin on an old favourite.

I use Italian sausages with pasta quite often, but I don't do anything particularly fancy or complicated with them. Usually I just break them up while frying them and then toss them in tomato sauce, often with artichoke hearts. I then saw Jamie Oliver's recipe for "Pregnant Jools's Pasta" in his cookbook Meals in Minutes, which is a different approach to sausage pasta than my usual. He puts the sausages through the food processor before frying it up, which gives the sausage a more silky texture, as opposed to the more rustic texture of my sausage pastas. He also makes the sauce with carrot, celery (which unfortunately I didn't have on hand) and diced tomatoes, which makes it taste fresh.

Pulled Pork Pasta

We had a lot of pulled pork left over from making pulled pork sandwiches the other day. Instead of making more sandwiches, I thought we would try making some pulled pork pasta. I have to admit that the idea came from that Boston Pizza commercial where the guy eats their pulled pork penne and turns into a "foodie," which in the commercial, apparently isn't a good thing. Too bad for me, since I self-identify as one. The commercial actually drives me crazy (mostly because it gets played alllll the time) but the idea was interesting.

I was going to make some tomato sauce to mix with the pulled pork but didn't have time, so I just used jarred sauce. Since we had the leftover pork, all of the hard work was already done. This was super quick and easy, and pretty tasty. It's so simple that I kind of feel silly writing it out like you don't know how to boil pasta and heat some sauce, but I guess not everything I put on this blog is going to be complicated, so here it is in all its glory!

Pan-Seared Salmon with Bacon Clam Chowder

This might sound kind of cheesy, Chef Michael Smith is kind of a culinary hero of mine. It was his show, Chef at Home, that I first started watching years ago that made me think that I could actually cook something decent if I tried (I didn't count boiling pasta and heating sauce from a can as "real" cooking back then). He really made cooking accessible for me, and I began to see that it was actually easier than I thought to put together great dishes.

Nowadays I also follow chefs like Jamie Oliver who seem to have a similar approach to home cooking. They have shown me that it's not necessary to obsessively follow recipes to make good food, but rather to learn the basic processes and the ingredients and then get a feel for how the dishes are made so that you can freestyle somewhat and personalize the dishes once you get comfortable with them. Some may say it's a casual approach to cooking, but I like to think of it as instinctive.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork Sandwiches with Coleslaw

I have been meaning to make pulled pork for ages. It's one of those recipes that I pin and bookmark every time I see it, but have never gotten around to trying. Well, I was watching Chef Michael's Kitchen the other day (love that show!), and lo and behold, he was making pulled pork sandwiches. The recipe was simple enough, and he was using a slow cooker, so I adapted his recipe and finally made us some yummy pulled pork.

Chicken with Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I've been watching a ton of Food Network lately, which is good because I get a lot of new recipe ideas, but it's also bad because I see so much delicious food that I can't immediately eat. I have discovered so many great shows lately. Our PVR is really filling up, and I have gotten so many good ideas for dishes to try!

I was watching one show where they were making chicken with mushrooms in a cream sauce, and I pretty much thought about that dish for days. I never used to like mushrooms much, but I guess my palate has developed because now I really enjoy them. I finally decided to make it, so I adapted a recipe I found from the BBC, since I couldn't remember the show that I saw it on. I am so glad I finally tried it. It's going to be one of my regular dishes on the dinner circuit for sure!

Baked Eggs in Avocado with Fresh Salsa

I'm usually not much of a breakfast person and most of the time I have something quick like cereal or Eggos. (Sometimes too many Eggos - blueberry ones - slathered in butter. It's a weakness of mine.)  Every once in a while though, I find a recipe that inspires me to do something fancier for breakfast.

That's what happened when I saw baked eggs with bacon in avocado on SteakNPotatoesKindaGurl. I love avocados so I couldn't wait to try them. I wanted to add some freshness to the dish, though, so I thought I would make it with some homemade salsa and without the bacon.

Coconut Lime Rice Pudding

I have been experimenting with changing up my go-to brownie recipe lately but haven't been totally happy with the results yet. (I'll definitely share the recipe when I get it right!) The upside of the culinary experimentation is that we have had a couple of batches of brownies to eat. Even if they aren't as spectacular as I imagined them, they are still brownies and I can't pass those up!

Still, I was craving something sweet, but not too sugary for a change. I couldn't stop thinking about the can of coconut milk I had in my cupboard and thinking I wanted to make a cold dessert with it. I have never made dessert with coconut milk before, but started thinking about what I could do and decided I wanted to try a rice pudding. I found a tasty-sounding recipe on Epicurious and adapted it. It yields 4 to 6 servings, depending on how big a portion you want. (I ended up with two small bowls and two medium bowls.) It is a bit rich, so you may want to keep the portions on the smaller side.

The rice pudding was delicious. It was rich and creamy even though I only used 2% milk, and it was sweet, but not overly so. The original recipe called for twice as much sugar, but I found even cutting the sugar in half that it was sweet enough for me. The hint of lime was a good balance for the richness of the coconut. The texture was great too - the rice was soft but not mushy, so the pudding still had substance to it. I would definitely make this again. It satisfied my craving perfectly!

Shrimp, Avocado and Tomato Pasta Salad

This shrimp, avocado and tomato pasta salad is a dish that I threw together the other day when I was trying to figure out what to do with the ripe avocado that we had sitting around. I wanted to try something new but didn't have anything particular in mind, so I used the avocados as a starting point and tried to figure out what would taste good with it. We had cooked shrimp in the freezer and a couple of pints of ripe grape tomatoes, so I decided to throw those ingredients together into a quick pasta salad.

Crispy Cheese and Dill Quinoa Balls with Spicy Mayo Dip

Holy SMOKES, guys, I'm in love with these things. This recipe for these quinoa balls was inspired by the ones I saw over at A Pretty Life. I was excited to find another way to prepare quinoa besides in a salad so I thought I'd try them, but I wanted to put my own spin on them. I thought that the version I planned in my head would be good, but I had no idea how delicious they would be.

The quinoa balls are tasty, but eating them with the spicy mayo is what takes them over the top. They are crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and the dill pairs so nicely with the cheese. The spicy mayo adds a rich creaminess and some zip to them.

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

I have this bad habit of putting bananas that are past their prime into the freezer and just saying that one day I'll use them to make banana bread, rather than just tossing them. Or maybe that's a good habit, since that means I don't waste food if I can help it. However, I'm also notoriously lazy with actually getting around to making said banana bread, so I often end up with a bunch of frozen, sad-looking bananas sitting around in the freezer for ages.

Homemade Chicken Soup

My husband got sick recently, so I decided to make him some chicken soup from scratch. The canned stuff, while convenient, just isn't as good. Unfortunately, just after I decided to make the soup, I realized I didn't have any chicken with bones or any chicken stock on hand.

After some very unhelpful Googling about whether or not I could make a decent chicken soup from scratch using just chicken pieces without bones, I thought I would just roll the dice and give it a try. I did have a can of chicken noodle soup on standby, in case it didn't work.

Blueberry Scones

I love blueberry scones. I used to buy them along with my morning coffee all the time, which got a little expensive. I never thought about making my own until I stumbled across a recipe for blueberry scones on Garnish with Lemon. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to try to make them.

Tomato and Chickpea Quinoa Salad

Hi everyone! Sorry (again) for being away for so long. Life with a baby has been more hectic than anticipated so I haven't had my act together enough to blog regularly like I had planned. I consider it a success to just get dinner on the table so I haven't taken much time to actually take pictures in the process.

I have missed blogging, though, and with spring coming soon (or so I keep telling myself) I am making grand plans for many new projects around the house and kitchen and am going to do my best to get back to blogging somewhat regularly to document it all.

Tomato and Feta Phyllo Tart

One day long ago, I was watching a cooking show about some sort of fancy phyllo pastry involving spicy soppressata, an Italian salami that I love. I bought the phyllo and then never made the pastry. (Typical procrastinate-y me.) The phyllo has been sitting in my freezer for months.

I knew if I waited until I found that recipe again and then went and got whatever ingredients I needed in order to make it, I'd probably never get around to using the phyllo. We had lots of grape and cherry tomatoes from our garden sitting around, so I decided to make a tart with those tomatoes and some delicious feta instead. You can't go wrong with that combination!

Chicken Stew

Hello everyone! I apologize (again) for yet another long absence. I am now the proud mother of a two-and-a-half-month-old baby boy. I had all these grand visions of trying great recipes and blogging away after maternity leave started but before the baby came, but instead I mostly nested and tried to sleep. Since the baby came, life has been more hectic (but in the best possible way) so there hasn't been much time for blogging, hence the absence of recent posts.

Now that things are starting to settle into more of a routine (though I probably just jinxed myself), I'm hoping I will have more time to get back to blogging again. I want to try out more recipes involving short cooking times and/or my slow cooker, since most of the time whatever I am doing gets sidelined by a crying baby. It would be great to be able to just toss things into a pot and let it simmer away rather than making something that requires a lot of preparation time or having to stick close by the stove and hoping that the baby stays asleep until dinner is ready, because that doesn't work most of the time.

Blueberry Banana Muffins

It's always nice to have something that I can bring to work to have for breakfast, especially since I've always been a bit lazy about breakfast. If I have something quick and easy to eat though, I have less of an excuse to skip breakfast. Now that blueberries are in season, I thought it would be nice to make a tasty blueberry muffin, but I wanted to make sure that it would come out nice and moist. I hate dry, crumbly muffins!

Greek Chicken Wraps

Our weekends have been really hectic lately. We have been preparing for the baby, who is due in about a month and a half, so our weekends have been taken up with things like prenatal class and shopping for baby stuff. As fun as it has been, it's also been pretty tiring, so cooking has fallen by the wayside a bit. You can probably tell from the decline in recipes that I've posted lately!

This past weekend, we still had some errands to run, but it wasn't nearly as busy. It was nice to have some downtime, which also meant that we were able to cook a delicious dinner instead of just popping a frozen pizza in the oven or boiling pasta to have with some simple sauce.