Spaghetti Dinner

Oh my goodness! Things have been super hectic at work, so you'll have to forgive me for not coming round more often. In fact, fast and easy cooking hasn't been more helpful as it has the past week or two. I wanted to get this posted since it really helped me get dinner done and in my tummy in a hurry last night. Super simple, super fast, and best of all, super yummy! Pic here is courtesy of Martha. Definitely gonna keep this recipe in my back pocket.

Herbed Spaghetti
Recipe from Everyday Food; Serves 4
















Coarse salt and ground pepper
1/2 pound thin whole-wheat spaghetti
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley, tarragon, and chives

• In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta until al dente according to package instructions. Drain, reserving 1/2 cup pasta water. Return pasta to pot.
• Stir in butter, lemon zest, juice, and herbs; season with salt and pepper. Add some of the reserved pasta water to adjust consistency, if needed. Serve.

My notes: I used parsley, and I forgot to keep any of my pasta water, so I just added a little extra butter. Mmmmm. Hopefully things will be slowing down soon, and I'll have more free time to devote to getting recipes up on here. :)

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

I had noticed this recipe before. It had wormed it's way into a back corner of my mind, and slept there, waiting for the day it would be awoken. And last week while I was planning my weekly menu, it finally arose. Molly mentioned it once again on her blog last week, which brought it to the forefront of my mind. I decided it would be perfect for this week, and as it turned out I picked the perfect night to make it. It was quite cold last night, and sleet came shining down most of the evening. This sauce was bright, but also very comforting. Josh is not always the biggest fan of sauce. He has been known to skip out on it completely and just coat is spaghetti with butter and Parmesan instead. But he seemed pleased to try this, and in fact had a second helping. Huzzah, a very simple and delicious sauce that my husband is happy to eat. In the future I would like to pull this recipe out for entertaining.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter
Recipe from Orangette, adapted from Marcella Hazan; Makes 4 servings












2 cups whole, peeled, canned plum tomatoes, chopped, with their juices (about one 28-oz. can)
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and cut in half
Salt, to taste

• Combine the tomatoes, their juices, the butter, and the onion halves in a medium saucepan. Add a pinch or two of salt. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, at a very slow but steady simmer, adjusting the heat as necessary, for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free from the tomato. Stir occasionally, mashing any large pieces of tomato with the back of a wooden spoon. Taste and salt as needed.
• Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with pasta.

My notes: I think one of the things that I really liked about this is that it reminded me very much of the simplest of simple meals my grandmother used to make when I was growing up- macaroni and tomato juice. Yep, that's about as simple as it gets, short of just dry macaroni. This had a similar, but so much fuller flavor. Loved this sauce. Try it. I added some cracked black pepper and a little freshly grated Parmesan. Josh added a lot of Parmesan, as per usual.

In Case You Didn't Believe Me When I Said

I wasn't a foodie, I've come baring more proof. I have a couple other things that I could post about, since I made them prior to tonight's dinner, but they'll just have to wait. I didn't want to put off telling you about our meal any longer than I'd have to. The other day, while perusing food blogs, like ya do, I wandered over to Ruth's blog, Once Upon A Feast. As I scrolled down the page I delighted in finding the collection of recipes from Presto Pasta Night #34. I didn't have to look for long before one particular item caught my eye. I immediately linked over to the Spaghetti Sandwich, submitted by Alisha of Cook.Craft.Enjoy. And so tonight, I did just that. I cooked spaghetti, I crafted it into a sandwich, and I enjoyed. While I didn't follow her actual recipe, it was the inspiration for our meal, so she deserves props. So, if you ever think- hmm this pasta sure is good, but shoving it between two slices of bread would make it that much better
- read on.

Spaghetti Sandwich
Recipe inspired by Cook.Craft.Enjoy.; Serves a lot












1 7 oz. package fideo pasta
1 pound ground beef, 93% lean
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 15 oz. cans crushed tomatoes
garlic powder
dried basil
dried oregano
coarse salt
freshly ground black pepper
red pepper flakes
french loaf- or whatever bread you especially like for garlic toast
butter

• Cover the bottom of a large saucepan with olive oil and heat over medium heat. Add ground beef and brown until there is no pink left, making sure to break up into a good crumble. Drain the beef and set aside. Return pan to stove, add a little more olive oil and cook onion and garlic for several minutes, till beginning to soften. Add meat back to pan, with both cans of crushed tomatoes. Begin seasoning, adding as you feel necessary and tasting often. Once the taste is to your liking reduce heat to low.
  
• Boil salted water and cook fideo pasta for approximately 9 minutes. Drain and return to pan.
• Cut thick slices from french loaf- large enough to make a decent sized sandwich. Butter both sides of slices and press one side each with garlic powder and a sprinkling of oregano. Toast in a skillet over medium heat till each side is to your desired crispness.
• Meanwhile, combine your sauce and pasta. Once toasts are done, spoon spaghetti onto one slice and top with the second.

My notes: I don't know if anyone is going to bother trying this, ha. But if you do you should know that you will have a ton of spaghetti leftovers, so this itself would probably be the ideal leftovers meal, following a pleasant spaghetti dinner. As it is we will behaving spaghetti for lunch tomorrow, ha.

Broccoli Spaghetti

Thought I would do a quick write up on tonight's dinner. No pic, the camera wasn't cooperating this evening. This recipe came from Real Simple. I found it online, but it's from the February 2004 issue, if you happen to have a that issue lying around. It seemed like a great way to use the leftover rotisserie chicken I had after making a chicken & spinach pizza Monday night.

Broccoli Spaghetti
Recipe from Real Simple; Serves 4

1 pound spaghetti
1 large head of broccoli (1/2 pound)
1/4 cup olive oil
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 rotisserie chicken, meat shredded (2 cups)
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

• Cook spaghetti according to the label directions and drain, reserving 1/2 cup of the cooking water.
• Meanwhile, cut off the broccoli stalk, peel it, and thinly slice it crosswise. Cut the remaining broccoli into small florets. Heat half the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic, broccoli, and half the salt and cook until the garlic is lightly browned and the broccoli is fork-tender, 4 to 5 minutes.
  
• Add the pasta, the shredded chicken, the reserved pasta water, the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and a few grinds of black pepper. Cook until heated through, about 3 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes and toss well. Drizzle with the remaining oil before serving.

My notes: I totally forgot to add the red pepper flakes, d'oh. It still tasted good, and maybe it's better I forgot the flakes since I don't need to make anything too spicy for Josh. Also, I bought a bag of fresh broccoli florets to save myself some time. That usually works to my advantage because Josh prefers florets over stalk pieces. I just cut some of the larger florets down. I've been buying a lot of rotisserie chickens lately for different uses, and they have been especially handy while Josh has been sick- providing a quick source of tasty protein that won't cause him any difficulty. At the rate I've been buying these I can definitely see myself making these recipes again.

PS: The Minneapolis bridge situation is terribly sad and tragic, so please say a little (or big) prayer for all the people affected.

Catch-up and Weekend Plans

Well, this week I was forced into some simplistic cooking. I hadn't gotten all the ingredients I needed for one meal, and the heavy rains made it darn near impossible to get to the store. So I had to shuffle some recipes around and come up with some quick substitutes. Wednesday night I didn't have anything planned since the weather caused such upheaval, so I threw together a super fast, super easy, and definitely not all that healthy meal. I have a myriad of boxed products in the pantry, remnants from the days that dinner equaled some meat on the foreman grill, a canned veg in the microwave, and either another veg or one of those boxes. Now, while these meals weren't anything impressive, they were incredibly fast. Often times all I needed was 10 minutes and we'd be ready to eat. I have to say that sometimes I wish things were still that easy, and I got my wish Wednesday night. I had half a package of turkey sausage leftover from the jambalaya I made Monday evening. I heated that through and served it with canned green beans, canned corn, and instant mashed potatoes. Yes, I said instant. Confession time: I have so much trouble peeling potatoes that I used to buy instant all the time. Now I just keep the skins on them and pretend I do it solely for nutrition, ha.

Last night I was going to heat up some vegetable marinara I had pulled from the freezer the day before. For whatever reason though, all day long I kept thinking about buttery, garlicky, spaghetti totally sans sauce. When I got home and peered at the watery looking sauce that came forth from the fridge, I knew I wanted it even less. So, I opted to melt 4 tablespoons butter in a saucepan, and heat 2 pressed cloves of garlic with plenty of cracked black pepper. It was so yummy, not to mention incredibly cheap! I used my .25 cent package of made-in-Mexico spaghetti, and I'm not gonna bother to do the math on how much half a stick of butter and 2 garlic cloves cost, but I'm pretty darn sure it's not much.

This weekend I've got lots of plans. I'll be grocery shopping after work and I'm hoping to toss together a pizza tonight before Josh runs off to band practice and I work on organizing the pantry. Tomorrow morning I'm hoping to try out a recipe from a blog I just found this week. Saturday night we've got a dinner date with Steph and Rodney. Steph and I are going to go shopping for our ingredients and cook together, and the boys of course will do the dishes! Lastly I am really hoping to find time to make some granola on Sunday. I hope my weekend is as productive as I'm making it sound. And I hope you guys have a great weekend too!

Bolognese beating

I know I still need to post about Tuesday night's dinner, but last night was so rough I gotta vent about it now. In fact, this week has been rather rough in total. I went grocery shopping Monday night after work. I needed some ground pork for Wednesday's dinner, but there was none to be found. And then when I got home I realized I also forgot the zucchini I needed for Tuesday's meal. So, Tuesday after work I went to a different grocery store for the zucchini and pork. There I was informed by the very young man behind the meat counter that they had just a day or two prior marked the ground pork down because it was about to go bad. It sold out, so I was just a day or two late. Sounds to me like I was right on time. Anyway, last night I made the third trip to a store in search of ground pork. I got it, but for a quite unreasonable almost $6 for barely over a pound. But I was making one of Josh's favorite meals, the one thing he requested when I inquired during my menu planning last week. So, I got it and hurried home, later than usual because of the grocery trip. And then I needed to start on the 5 loads of laundry that didn't get done over the weekend. When I got to the fridge to start gathering ingredients I discovered my ground beef was only partially thawed. Awesome. So, I Googled fast and safe thawing methods. I am typically very paranoid about thawing meats- fridge only for me. Ended up immersing it in a bowl of cold water for 30 minutes and it worked. At least I got a valuable tip out of this whole thing. So, between prepping ingredients, starting the sauce, and running to the laundry room to move loads from washer to dryer, and start washers again, the sauce wasn't ready for it's hour long simmer till 8:12. Yeah. And then it goes 15 minutes after that. Josh and I actually ate dinner together. That almost never happens Tuesday through Thursday. I didn't even finish eating till after 10. I still had laundry to get out of the dryer, too. Oh gosh, it was a long night.

Okay, vent over, on to the recipe. Like I mentioned, Spaghetti Bolognese is one of Josh's most favorite meals. When I attempt to press him to say which his favorite is he says he likes everything I make. But this is the one he mentions the most to other people when talking about my cooking, the one he requests the most, and the one he seems most happy to gobble up. I have mentioned this sauce before, because you use the leftovers to create Bolognese Pie, which I think Josh likes even more than the spaghetti version. As long as this sauce is involved he seems to be a happy camper. It is an Everyday Food recipe, as are most things I make if you haven't caught on to that by now, ha. Oh, and the pic is from the Martha Stewart website. We got new laptops and I haven't installed the camera's software on mine yet. And to be honest I have no idea how, so I've got to get Josh to do it. Not that my pics are that great anyway, so I'm not really depriving you of anything spectacular.

Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce
Recipe from Everyday Food; Serves 4- plus 4 cups for Bolognese Pie
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped (3 cups)
3 carrots, finely chopped (1 cup)
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 pound ground beef
1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup tomato paste
Coarse salt and ground pepper
1 cup dry white wine
1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes in puree
1 cup milk
12 ounces spaghetti
Finely grated Parmesan cheese, for serving

• Make sauce: In a Dutch oven (or 5-quart saucepan), heat oil over high heat. Add onions, carrots, and garlic; cook, stirring, until slightly softened, about 2 minutes. Add beef and pork; cook, breaking up meat with a spoon, until no longer pink, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste; cook 1 minute. Season generously with salt and pepper.
• Add wine and tomatoes. Bring sauce to a simmer; cook, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 1 hour. Add milk; simmer until completely absorbed, about 15 minutes more. Season again with salt and pepper.
• When sauce is almost done, cook pasta in a pot of boiling salted water until al dente, according to package instructions; drain. Toss pasta with half the meat sauce; save 4 cups for Bolognese Pie. Serve sprinkled with cheese.

My notes: Sometimes I use Parmesan, sometimes I don't. My husband puts Parmesan on any pasta dish, so there is plenty on his. Since there's just the two of us I typically freeze 4 cups of the sauce to make the Bolognese Pie at a later date, and then freeze any sauce leftover after that separately, for an additional quick meal with spaghetti. The Bolognese Pie serves 4, so with this one pot of sauce we get anywhere from 8-10 meals, depending on how much sauce we each use on our spaghetti.

And don't forget to come visit me at my new blog On This Harvest Moon!

Spaghetti & Meatballs

Monday night I made Spaghetti with Vegetable Marinara and Parmesan Meatballs. I'm quite pleased with how this meal came out because I just kind of made it up as I went along. My one regret is that I put my sauce over my meatballs so you can't really see them in the pic. I've never made meatballs before, so this was a bit of an experiment for me. This made enough for us to both have a good meal, and I have extra sauce and meatballs in the freezer for another night. I didn't really follow a set recipe for any of it, so I'll just try to re-cap as best I can.

Spaghetti with Vegetable Marinara & Parmesan Meatballs
Recipe from me!
Meatballs-
1 lb. ground beef
1/5 cup dried breadcrumbs
1/5 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 egg
1/3 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1/3 teaspoon dried basil
Coarse salt and ground pepper

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl using a fork or your hands. Roll meat mixture into balls about the size of ping-pong balls. Place on cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes.
• If freezing for later use, arrange on cookie sheet and place in freezer for 30 minutes. Remove from freezer and place in airtight container or freezer bag. Flash freezing beforehand will keep them from sticking to one another.

Vegetable Marinara-
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, ribbed & seeded, chopped
1 small zucchini, quartered lengthwise and chopped
1 can Hunt's Garlic & Herb Tomato Sauce
Crushed red pepper flakes
Dried oregano leaves
Dried basil
Coarse salt and ground pepper

• Heat oil in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, pepper, and zucchini; cook, stirring, until vegetables have softened.
• Add tomato sauce. Add seasonings to taste. Stirring occasionally, cook until heated through.

My notes: I just eyeball how much spaghetti I want to cook. I usually have leftovers but we were hungry people. :) I was going to add carrots to the sauce, but I discovered that Josh had taken the baby carrots to work with him that morning. So, you might add carrots, if you're so inclined.

The rest of this week has been comprised of repeat performances from Red Beans and Rice and Chicken Pot Pie. I was planning on making grilled cheese and soup tonight, but I actually didn't have the supplies in the pantry that I thought I did. I've been having real grocery problems lately. I've already spent over half my monthly budget, and it's only the 12th of the month. Jeezy Creezy! I've gotta do some re-thinking of the way I go about things, I guess.