I remember my first childhood encounter with stinging nettle all too well. My family was camping up in the bluffs above the California coast for the weekend and I had found a ground of kids to play a campground-wide game of hide and seek with. When the countdown began, we all took off flying on our bikes to find the best bit of shrubbery to launch ourselves into. Can you guess where I decided to hide?…
pasta
One Pot Vegan Bolognese
This week when one of my best friends received her masters degree (woohoo!), I decided that I would be a great excuse to throw an impromptu dinner party. If you know anything about me (besides my undying love of cheese) it’s that I love a good dinner party. Realistically, I even love a sorta okay dinner party. Basically if there is food involved, I’m there and happy as a clam….
Linguine + Clams with Chickpea Sauce
I’ve been having some serious pasta cravings this week and haven’t had the opportunity to feed the beast until this past Friday night. I finally broke out my super duper special durum flour and made some of my homemade pasta with it. It was life changing. I’m never using the all purpose stuff again… except when I run out of this fancy business of course. Until then, I’m a durum flour addict now. I most certainly need to go into recovery after eating all these leftovers.
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Homemade Chickpea Pasta [GF]
In my never-ending hunt for carbohydrates, I came upon the idea of using atypical flours to make my favorite homemade pasta dishes. I had no idea where to find garbanzo flour at my local supermarket, so I wandered onto the interwebs over to Amazon to search for it there. It turns out it wasn’t really that hard to find after all! Also it qualified for Prime shipping, so I was quite the happy camper. Two days later my garbanzo flour was patiently waiting at my door when I got home from work, ready to be made into some delicious, albeit somewhat difficult pasta.
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Chicken Zoodles + Creamy Sundried Tomato Sauce
Zoodles. What a weird word. It’s really fun to say but unless you’re hip to the Pinterest universe, it can sound like complete gibberish. Apparently it’s a mix of the words zucchini and noodles, though why they didn’t go with noochini is beyond me. I think I’m going to start calling it noochini from now on.. we’ll see how long that lasts.
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Spaghetti + Eggplant “Meat”balls
What can I say, I’ve finally jumped on the Meatless Mondays train. After doing a bit of research about it last night, I found that there are a large number of countries around the globe that support Meatless Mondays in the name of sustainability and an even bigger number of restaurants that subscribe to the movement. Not only does it help promote environmental sustainability and your general health, it also requires you to be creative when putting together your shopping list every week, which is always something that I love doing.
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Portobello Mushroom Ravioli + Sage Brown Butter Sauce
I don’t know what it is about this overcast weather that we’ve been having recently, but I have been craving pasta like nobody’s business. I’m a big fan of carbs as I always keep repeating, and pasta fits nicely into this category. …
Quick + Easy Lasagna
When one hosts a last minute dinner party on a work night, one needs to find a quick, hearty meal that can serve a crowd without A) taking hours to prepare B) breaking the bank + C) requiring a lot of active time as guests start arriving.
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Homemade Gnocchi + Wild Mushroom Ragù
On a whim, my brother decided that he was going to be home from college for a few days this weekend. Whenever he’s home, I immediately go into full Italian grandmother mode and make oodles and oodles of food, mostly in the hopes that it will entice him to choose LA over Denver when the time comes to graduate. He asked if I wanted to cook dinner on Friday and offered himself and a few of his friends as my potential kitchen scullions. …