Pork Noodle Bowl

Tasty, spicy recipe from Cooking Light. It’s super easy, but more of a 40 minute than a 30 minute meal, which I thought it would be going in. Reminiscent of sesame noodles. I bet it would be good garnished with toasted sesame seeds. Mine turned out a bit spicier than expected – I think because [...]

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

Loved the sauce for this dish (based on Emeril’s recipe). The shrimp I bought from the store, however, were not very good, bringing down the meal a bit. I ate the leftovers sans shrimp.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi w/ fried sage and gorgonzola cream sauce

This was quite a project, but it ended up being a delicious combination. I relied chiefly on these two recipes for inspiration.

Fancy Mac & Cheese

Was flipping through Cooking Light (whose redesign, by the way, I am not a fan of, but that’s a rant for some other time) and stumbled on a section about mac and cheese. I ended up taking a cue from them and essentially combining two of their recipes into something tasty. Omit bacon to make [...]

Pasta primavera with shrimp and pesto cream sauce

Friday’s makeshift dinner. I thought the color was slightly unappetizing but the taste was solid.

Mushroom Pasta

The key to this recipe (shockingly enough) is kick-ass mushrooms. I like using the combo packet from the farmer’s market, where the guy tends to combine a mix of oyster, enoki, cremini and white. To make this dish vegetarian, use vegetable or mushroom broth.

Mandy’s Chicken Sausage Pasta

My sister passed on this recipe to me when she heard I’d been doing Weight Watchers and have been trying to eat healthier. I think she got it from Food Network.
It’s definitely tasty, though there is less of a sauce than I expected. Definitely add in the additional broth at the end – I might [...]

Fajita Pork & Pasta

I stayed pretty faithful to this Weight Watchers recipe (mostly b/c I didn’t want to accidentally add points when I’ve just started). It was REALLY good. My main change was throwing in some Penzey’s fajita seasoning, which is excellent. I served this with a side of raw spinach dressed in salt and lemon juice.

Butternut Squash and Hazelnut Lasagna

I brought this to Coop’s Halloween gathering and it was a big hit. I remembered making this recipe for one of Emily’s Bollywood parties years ago, and figured I’d use it again. It was a big hit, though I made some changes from the recipe.

Plum Wine “Bolognese”

John discovered that plum wine makes a good substitute for red wine in bolognese sauce when he was out of the latter one time. So tonight, I made the swap on purpose. As a note, this deviates a bit from the classic bolognese sauce – no carrot, had to use milk instead of cream, sausage [...]