Marinara Pasta Sauce ~ page 23

Here is a funny story for you....I blogged about this recipe exactly a year ago. Well, in a couple weeks it will be a year to be exact. Check out the date on my freezer bag below! I was almost 9 months pregnant waiting for a baby anyday. I'll blame pregnancy hormones on the mis-spelling of Marinara on the bag! I remember blogging about this recipe, telling all of you that I was stocking my freezer for the arrival of Baby Sylvia. Of course at the time we didn't know if I was having a boy or girl. Anyway, baby came and life went on...and on...and on..until just yesterday while I was digging in my freezer with a 11 month old pulling up on my legs, and I came across this bag below! I chuckled to myself as I remembered thinking a year ago, "this will come in handy for dinner with a newborn in the house"

So, anyway, I thawed that bag out and made me some dinner. Guess what? It was delicious! Before this experience if you had asked me how long the marinara would have lasted in the freezer, I would have told you to try to eat it within 6 months. But here we are a year later and it was better than I even remembered. I did let it simmer all afternoon, so it got super thick and rich. (I added ground turkey to mine) Oh, a new trick I learned is to add a little cream to the sauce as it is simmering, it makes the meat tender and adds a nice richness. So go see what you have hiding in your freezer! --Carissa

Jumbo Stuffed Pasta Shells ~ page 85

These beautiful shells are my favorite make-ahead company dish. The recipe makes enough for your freezer so that you can have them for company at least twice. They are a little bit of effort, but it is fun to make them, and since you can do it ahead of time, the extra effort doesn't seem like so much.

This is the before the freezer picture.

When making the filling, I like to use the frozen, loose, cut leaf spinach. You don't have to thaw it and squeeze it--which I don't like to do.

The Italian sausage must be removed from it's casing.

The sausage is browned with ground beef. You may substitute ground turkey for the beef if you prefer.

Stir in the onion to cook, then drain everything on a paper towel.

The cooked meat, spinach, and cheese mixture are stirred together. This is the stuffing for the pasta.

Cook the jumbo shells for about 2 minutes less than what is called for on the package. Rinse the pasta to stop the cooking. These are very easy to stuff.

To freeze, spread the stuffed shells out on a couple trays and put the whole tray, uncovered, in the freezer.

When shells are hard and frozen, place them in zipper-lock baggies, seal, label, and put back in the freezer till needed.

To serve, put spaghetti sauce in bottom of baking dish, and lay frozen shells on top. Cover dish and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes. When they are hot, put mozzarella cheese on top each shell, and put back in oven until cheese is melted. Place a spoon of hot spaghetti sauce on each plate, and carefully place 3 shells per serving on top the sauce. Spoon just a bit of extra sauce on the tops.

It had been a couple years since I had made these...and when I served them last week David asked, "Do I have to wait that long again?" He really likes this dish. I served these to my visiting granddaughter, Lillian, tonight and she said, "This is tasty pasta, Grandmother, can I have another one?"

Angel Hair with Fresh Herbs and Tomato ~ page 88

I have been waiting to make this recipe until the tomatoes in my garden ripened. This is a nice, light summer meal, but it is a hot meal, not salad or sandwiches like most summer meals.

I grow a lot of herbs in my garden, and it just makes me smile to use them. This is my basil, oregano, and thyme I used for this recipe. Actually, I cut this recipe in half, although I used the full portion of herbs, and also of the walnuts, because I like those parts of the recipe so much! (By the way, I always lightly toast nuts before I use them, to crisp them up and bring out the flavor.) I did not have goat cheese on hand, but I did have feta cheese, and that is a fine substitute. Also, my pasta was thin spaghetti, though the angel hair really is very nice if you have it.

This mulitgrain pasta adds some fiber, without getting too heavy a taste, like whole wheat pasta can.The jar on the right is capers, in case you are not familiar with them. They are much like tiny pearl-size olives. So if you need to substitute, use chopped olives. (The capers and the walnuts are the little flavor surprise in the recipe, so don't leave them out.) I am also showing you, on the left, a jar of prepared basil pesto...I used this on top of tilapia to quickly bake the fish and then put on top of my completed pasta recipe. This was a last-minute idea for adding a little more substance to the meal. It worked wonderfully!

This meal was ready in about 20 minutes. Can't beat that for in and out of the kitchen fast.

Spinach and Onion Couscous ~ page 104

I just started using couscous a few years ago--I don't know if it has been around forever, and I just didn't notice, or why I didn't know about it. Not sure. But it is my new quickie side dish. I especially like it in the summer, when I don't want to heat the kitchen up, but I don't want cold salad either.

Here are two kinds of couscous that comes in a box. Carissa just recently told me about the one on the right--called giant pasta pearls. I found it at the health food store. (Couscous is just pasta--tiny balls of it that don't have to cook, they just kind of rehydrate in hot liquid for 5 minutes.) Carissa's sister-in-law, Holly, made this recipe with the giant couscous for a crowd of probably 50 or more people for her brother Andrew's rehearsal dinner. I dropped by and got to taste it, and it was great! I really liked the large size of the couscous. One nice thing about this recipe, is that it can sit out for a long time, and is still very good at room temperature--which makes it wonderful for a buffet dish or pot luck. But today, I used the regular size couscous for this recipe. (The large size does need to cook longer, so that needs to be factored into this recipe...)

You can do this whole recipe in a skillet. I sautéed the onion and garlic, then piled in my fresh spinach. I cooked the spinach for about a minute till it wasn't overflowing the pan...

Then just dump in the dry couscous and the hot chicken broth (which I made with boiling water and granular chicken bouillon) and cover the pan and remove from heat. After 5 minutes, fluff with a fork and stir in the lemon juice, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper. You probably wont need extra salt because chicken broth is always very salty on its own. Pretty fast, huh?

Here is a vegetarian meal with Spinach and Onion Couscous along with Squash Dressing, just one page over in the cookbook. If my garden tomatoes were ripe (they will be in about 1 week!) I would have just served this recipe along with a plate a fresh sliced tomatoes, and called it a light summer meal.

Creamy Pasta with Roasted Spring Veggies ~ page 94

Cathy posted on this recipe not long ago, but I thought I would add a few more pictures and my comments. By the way, in case yo have not noticed, on the left side of the blog is an Archive section. Here you can easily find any recipe that has been posted. Hopefully, when  you are cooking a recipe, you will use the archives to find pictures, comments, and any corrections for that recipe.

I roasted asparagus, mushrooms, orange bell pepper, and garlic together. I also used a multi-grain pasta, and some really nice, flavorful Parmigiana/Reggiano cheese from Costco.

The veggies get tossed in olive oil, then off to the oven to roast.

The recipe says to simmer the milk and cream with dried basil, but since I had fresh basil from my garden, I didn't simmer it, as that would make it loose it's pretty bright color. If you use fresh, just stir it in as you are mixing everything together at the end. In my sauce, I used half and half instead of the cream called for, and I found that the sauce was pretty thin, it didn't thicken up much during the simmer time. Usually you can substitute cream or half and half in many recipes, but I think this one works better if you use the (whipping) cream as called for.

Now here is a variation I am adding for Day 2 (meaning, leftovers) of this Creamy Pasta dish:

I made the Homemade Creamy Alfredo Sauce ~ page 20; it has even more Parmesan mixed into a lovely silky sauce. (Look at the Archives under sauces to read about this recipe.) I cut the recipe in half for this use. That works just fine. This stuff is amazing! The flavor is spectacular in this sauce. It is in a different category than any jarred Alfredo sauce you have ever tried.

My second day leftovers of Creamy Pasta with Roasted Spring Veggies took on a whole new life with the Alfredo sauce poured over it.

Angel Hair with Fresh Herbs and Tomato ~ page 88

This would be a great side dish, although I made it a main dish by adding shrimp, there is a picture at the end showing the shrimp.

The recipe calls for goat cheese, but I wasn't thinking straight at the grocery store and bought Feta (I'll blame it on the pregnancy hormones) So I went ahead and proceeded anyway. I thought it was a fine substitute, although not as creamy as goat cheese would have been. I also forgot to buy angel hair pasta, so regular spaghetti it was!

The tomato mixture looked and tasted like something you would put on bruschetta!
Below is how many tomatoes it takes to make a pound. The recipe calls for a pound, but I was a little shy with Roma tomatoes, so I added some leftover sliced tomatoes I had in the fridge. So for those out there wondering how many tomatoes you need to buy...I say 7 Roma tomatoes.

In case you don't know what a caper looks like...here you go! Yummy little guys! They taste like pickles.

Below is a picture of our tasty dinner with shrimp added on top! YUM! I can't wait to try it with goat cheese like the recipe calls for. This was one of my mom's recipes that I had not made before. I will definitely make it again!

Creamy Pasta with Roasted Spring Veggies ~ page 94

Here is an email I got from Cathy--


Hi y'all!  I just wanted to let you know that I've been cooking from your cookbook lately, and we've been loving EVERYTHING!  I made the creamy pimento cheese spread tonight and couldn't stop eating it!  We've also done the creamy pasta with roasted veggies (which Matt declared to be "perfect"!), the garlic green beans and carrots (not sure that's the name of the recipe, but hopefully you know which one I'm talking about), and the red beans and rice with sausage. 


Anyway, I'm really enjoying cooking your recipes and wanted to let you know how DELICIOUS they all have been!  I've tried to remember to take pictures, but am failing miserably at it.  Here's the only one I've managed to take lately - of the creamy pasta with roasted veggies (I added shrimp to it, which turned out fabulous!). 

 I know you are collecting photos, so hopefully this is helpful.  I'm not so good as y'all at taking pictures of my preparations (which are never too orderly anyway!), but I'll try working on that!

Love
Cathy

Baked Ricotta and Spinach Rigatoni ~ page 79

I followed Carissa's suggestion and put half of this in a dish for the freezer--then baked the other half for supper. This mixes up by making a sauce first, then dumping everything into a large bowl.

I just put my frozen loose leaf spinach in straight from the freezer--no need to thaw.

I spooned this up after baking, but actuality, you can cut it into loose squares if you want it neater looking.

This is a complete side dish with any simple meat, roast, or fish. Tonight I served this with our Citrus Grilled Pork Tenderloin--I had a few leftover slices in my freezer. The two made a nice meal together. David thinks this recipe needs more salt, and I think it would be fine to up the salt to 1/2 teaspoon instead of the 1/4 teaspoon the recipe calls for. Let us know what you think when you make it!

Penne Pasta with Roasted Veggies ~ page 100

One of my favorite recipes in this book so far! Although the first time I made it Taylor complained it was "too dry and lacked flavor". Then he refused to eat the leftovers (very unusual for this leftover lover). Boo on him. I thought it was great! Determined for this to make it in the "permanent rotation" of meals on our regular dinner list, I tried again and did not let him know it was the same recipe. This time I went heavy on the balsamic vinegar and olive oil, added some oregano, garlic salt, mozzarella cheese and fresh parmesan cheese. I know, messed with the recipe a lot (forgive me Carissa-if it's any consolation, I liked it just the way you had it written) :-)
I'm pleased to announce that this time it was a HIT! It wasn't until after he scarfed it down and went back for seconds, that I reminded him of his disdain for it the first go 'round. (I know, I'm such a sneaky wife!) He was delighted in the meal this time and begged for me to make it again! I thought it was just as yummy as the first time!

Oh, and I used the remainder of the grilled chicken I had marinated in the homemade dressing from the Avacado, Cranberry and Pecan Salad and added it to this dish as well. The balsamic marinade complimented the pasta very well.