Balsamic Spinach, Tomato & Pepper Pasta

Ingredients:
- Box of bowtie pasta (you can use ziti, rotini, anything you want)
- Light Balsamic Vinaigrette salad dressing
- 2 cans diced italian tomatoes
- 2 bell peppers (red & yellow)
- spinach leaves

Directions:
- Prepare the pasta as directed on the box.
- While the pasta is cooking slice up the peppers.
- Toss the peppers in a skillet w/a little bit of olive oil, kosher salt, and italian seasoning.
- Add some of the balsamic dressing (I didn't measure but used about 1/3 cup)
- Next add the tomatoes, then a little more dressing (about another 1/3 or 1/4 cup).
- Let it simmer a few minutes, then add the spinach - I used the entire 6 oz bag and it was just right.  If you are an especially big spinach lover, buy a bigger bag!
- Stir it all around until the spinach wilts, then toss with your cooked pasta, top with some parmesan cheese and dinner is served.

This was a nice light and summery meal that I will definitely be making again.  I am not normally a huge fan of balsamic vinaigrette (to tangy/vinegary for me) but it worked well in this dish.  All 3 of us cleaned our plates and I am excited to take my leftovers to work tomorrow - that's how you know it was a pretty tasty meal! 

Homemade Pop Tarts

Colin loves pop tarts. Anytime he sees the silver wrapper he drops whatever he is doing and says, "eat".  It's really cute but I don't want my little monster to eat pop tarts all the time, even I do buy the pop tarts with no icing.  So I made some of my own.  This was the second or third time I have made them and Colin at two of them. When I asked if it was yummy, he said "nummy", which means that I am the best cook ever, at least to Colin.  These are easy and a tasty treat for breakfast every now and then.  These are fun too because you can use whatever filling you want - so far we have only tried strawberry and apple (I used canned apple pie filling) but the possibilities are endless!

Strawberry Pastry (Pop Tart)


Ingredients:
- 1 prepared pie crust ( I used Pillsbury - by the cookie dough at the grocery store)
- Strawberry jam 
- 1 egg white
- sugar for sprinkling


Directions:
- Unroll pie crust and trim to cut four squares of pastry.  Or you can cut the whole crust into four triangles - like a turnover.  If you choose to cut into squares, you will have leftover dough (squares of dough from a round  crust = leftover dough).  Just roll the leftover dough out again and you can get two more small squares.
- Spread dough with strawberry jam
- Fold dough over and use a fork to crimp the edges
- Brush the pastry crust with egg white and sprinkle with sugar.  I like to use the raw sugar (Luke uses the brown packets in his coffee) but plain white sugar is fine too.
- Bake as directed on the package - normally at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

*Note: make sure not to overfill your pastry because it will spill out and the jam/filling will get on everything else.  See my picture above as an example!  :)

Eggplant Parmesan

Luke requested a special lunch on Father's Day and this is what he wanted.  The picture is pretty terrible, but I had to use the Iphone because all 3 of us were hungry and didn't want to wait until the regular camera could be found.  This isn't much of a recipe, but it's one of our favorites.  The first time I had this dish was at Luke's house when we were in high school and then we made it pretty often in college.  It's funny how when you first start making a dish it takes a long time and seems really complicated - it is actually easy and pretty quick!  Enough chatter, here is the recipe.

Eggplant Parmesan
Serves 4 (at least)

Ingredients:

• 1 medium sized eggplant, sliced into 1/4" slices 
• Oil for frying (I used canola but you can use veggie)
• 2 eggs, whisked
• 1 cup flour (seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic and italian seasoning)
• Shredded parmesan cheese
• Creamy tomato sauce (see below)
• 1 package cooked spaghetti or angel hair pasta

Directions:

• Fill a skillet with enough oil to cover the bottom.
• Soak the slices of eggplant in a bowl of lightly salted water.  This sounds weird but it really did taste even better after I did this.  I only soaked mine for 10 minutes, then laid the eggplant on paper towels to dry.
• Fill one pie pan with whisked eggs and one pie pan with seasoned flour (using the salt, pepper, garlic, & italian seasoning to taste).
• Dredge eggplant slices in eggs, then in flour mixture.
• Fry over medium heat for about 3 minutes on each side...until they are nice and brown.
• Serve on top of spaghetti noodles.  I layered the eggplant slices like a lasagna - eggplant, creamy tomato sauce, parmesan cheese - I did this with 3 pieces of eggplant and topped again with parmesan cheese.

To make the creamy tomato sauce, I emptied two cans of tomato sauce into the saucepan.  I used a little salt, pepper, garlic, italian seasoning and heated through.  Once it's nice and hot, add heavy whipping cream - I used probably about 1/3 cup of cream.  You can use however much you want - it really makes a difference and is especially delicious with eggplant.  

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Sandwich

This isn't really a recipe either but it was so good.  A few months ago we went to Waffle House for breakfast and I got a toasted sandwich.  I have tried a couple of times to recreate it at home but it was never just right.  I finally got it on Saturday morning!  This is more camping food that was planned for our trip - also a crummy picture but I was hungry and ready to eat!

Ingredients:
1 egg
2 slices bacon
2 slices bread
2 slices american cheese


Directions:
- Cook the bacon over medium heat in a skillet or on a griddle.
- Fry the egg in the same pan you used to cook the bacon.
- While the egg is frying, toast the 2 pieces of bread.
- Assemble the sandwich: toast, cheese, bacon, egg, cheese, toast
- Put the entire sandwich back in the skillet/griddle and toast for a couple extra minutes on each side.

*I used a griddle so I cooked most everything at the same time = super quick and delicious breakfast.

Campfire Meal

On Friday night we were supposed to go camping.  On Thursday night Luke loaded up all of the equipment and the ice chest full of food.  On Friday morning he decided we were all too tired to go camping (he was right) but we made our campfire meal for dinner anyway.  It's not much of a recipe but it was actually pretty tasty and if you were eating it around a campfire I think it would taste even better.

Ingredients:
1 large can baked beans (we used bush's baked beans)
4 hot dogs, sliced
Half a medium onion, diced
1 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp mustard
1 tbsp brown sugar

Directions: Mix all ingredients and heat thoroughly - about 30 minutes.  We didn't actually measure the ketchup, mustard or brown sugar - just added to the pot and estimated.  All 3 of us liked this meal and if you are looking for super easy recipes to use while camping....you should try it!

Easy Pasta Primavera

This dish is so yummy and so easy. You can modify the types/amounts of vegetables to your heart’s content or using whatever veggies you have in your refrigerator, which is what I did last week. I bought some veggies from the farmer’s market the weekend before and wanted to use everything before it went bad. The recipe below is what I did.

Ingredients:
15 baby carrots, sliced into thin strips
1 zucchini, cut into thin strips
1 yellow squash, cut into thin strips
1 red belpepper, cut into thin strips
15 cherry tomatoes, halved
¼ cup olive oil
Kosher salt, ground black pepper to taste
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1 box bowtie pasta
½ cup shredded parmesan cheese

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 450. In a bowl, toss the veggies with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning. Spread evenly on a large cookie sheet/baking pan and bake for about 20 minutes, stirring after 10 minutes. Depending on how your oven cooks it may be a little shorter/longer than this – when the vegetables start to brown and the carrots are tender, they are done.

While everything is in the oven, cook your pasta. My box of bowtie pasta was half empty so I used the rest of what I had and added a half bag of tricolor spiral pasta and some mini shells to the pot too. See, I told you – this is like a clean out your pantry and fridge meal. Anyway, it was about 1 lb of pasta or close to it. Drain the pasta but make sure to reserve 1 cup of the pasta water/liquid. I did this by dipping my measuring cup in the pot before I drained the water, easy peasy.

Now mix the cooked pasta and roasted veggies. Add the pasta water to moisten – I used ½ cup of the water – and the parmesan cheese. Toss to mix and serve hot. We had big plates of pasta with generous portions of crusty garlic bread. As you can tell it was a very diet-friendly meal. Ha! It actually is not too terrible (minus the bread) as there is no cream sauce in this dish. It is fresh and spring-y (is that a word?) and we all loved it, especially little man. Hope you like it!

Note: If you do increase/decrease the amount of vegetables, make sure to do the same with the olive oil and Italian seasoning.