Creamy Pea Pasta

Creamy Pea Pasta has become one of my go to recipes. Quick lunches, easy dinners, and easy to change up. I know I make this atleast once a week, most of the time just so I can have three or four lunches prepacked and ready to grab. Steve? Yea, he's not so keen on it though he does't complain if I add some meat to his portion.

The beauty of this recipe is that its a basic cheese pasta. You can add onions and garlic and spinach and bake it in the oven for extra pizzazz or just leave it as it is for a macaroni and cheese style dish. My favorite way is with the Peas ofcourse. I love that burst of sweet green flavor and it gets that serving of veggies in!

*Pic of basic pasta without peas*

Creamy Pea Pasta
Ingredients:
1/2 box of spaghetti noodles (or one small package)
1/4 cup flour
1/2 stick of butter
2 cups green peas (frozen but thawed)
1/4 cup fresh grated parmesian
1/8 cup gruyere grated
1/2 cup cheddar grated
and I love throwing in one or two small cubes (about 3 tbs) of Velveeta for the cream factor.
2 1/4 cups milk

Directions:
Boil noodles in heavily salted water till tender.

Melt butter in sauce pan. (add onions and garlic if doing so here and cook for a minute or two). Add flour and whisk until smooth. Pour in milk slowly and stir until smooth. When milk mixture is thick enough to coat spoon, turn off heat and add cheeses. Stir until well blended. Toss in peas (and spinach or whatever else you are using at this point) into cheese mixture. Toss mixture with noodles. Serve warm.

Simple, quick and delicious! Dress it up by throwing it in gratin dishes and sprinkly with bread crumbs and baking with a side of garlic bread and fresh salad or keep it simple for weekly lunches. YUM!
*Picture with Peas and Thawed Chopped Spinach*

Sweet Potato Biscuits

I've been seeing Sweet Potato Biscuits running around on Food Network and blogs since Thanksgiving. With a plethora of sweet potatoes in season, I thought this would be the perfect time to try some new recipes. Sweet Potato Biscuits to serve the zesty chicken burgers on. Sweet and bright flavors combined. It was worth a shot!

The one thing I wish I had done was roll the dough out on a floured board and cut biscuits out instead of scooping them out with a measuring cup. The ended up spreading out too much and looking lumpy but they stayed together perfectly and were a bright orange color.

Sweet Potato BiscuitsIngredients:
1 cup self rising flour
2 tsp sugar
2 tbsp crisco
3/4 cup mashed sweet potato
1/4 cup whole milk

Directions:
Peel 2-3 sweet potatoes and cut into chuncks. Put in boiling salted water for about 30 minutes until tender. Place chuncks in food processor and blend until smooth. Measure out 3/4 cups.

Stir together all ingredients until dough is well blended and smooth.

Either roll onto floured board and cut out with biscuit cutter or glass. OR scoop with a 1/2 cup onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

*Note: I'm not sure where I got this recipe from. It is not referenced like most of mine. Since I didn't change the ingredients hardly at all and just changed the process some, please let me know if this is your recipe and I'll be happy to give credit!*

Chicken Burgers

Browsing through foodie blogs I came across Cilantro Chicken Burgers on Beantown Baker. Since I'm cutting out the majority of red meat, I thought this might be a great replacement for my lucious burgers. I'm not a big fan of cilantro and I wanted to make something quick and easy as my red meat burgers are so I immediately spun the recipe.

Citrus Chicken Burgers
Ingredients:
1 lb ground chicken
2 tbs minced garlic
1 small yellow onion
zest and juice from one small lemon
dash of soy sauce
pinch of salt and pepper
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup panko

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 6 muffin tin with cooking spray.

In food processor, chop onion. Add garlic, lemon zest and juice, soy sauce. Blend well. Add in ground chicken, salt and pepper, oatmeal, and panko.

Divide mixture into muffin tins and bake for about 40 minutes until crispy and golden on the top.

I served on Sweet Potato Biscuits for a bright fresh flavor.

Tornado Update

For those of you who heard about the recent tornado touch downs in High Point, NC (it made national news), I would like to give a personal update. The path of the tornado was about 1/2 mile from my house. If you had stood on my front porch you could have watched it the whole time. How scary is that?

A lovely Category (F) 3 that left a path of destruction over 200 yards wide for a couple miles. Trees, homes, powerlines, day car, vehicles etc. destroyed. So far I have not heard of anyone missing or dead and that is a wonderful thing. Homes that i drive by are leveled or split in half. It's very sad and when I drive by and see the utter devastation, it makes my heart drop to my feet to realize how close it came.

I am blessed with caring friends and family and as I sat huddled in my closet with my three dogs and cat curled around me (because like their mother they are big fat wusses too), my friend Beth and sister T were texting me where the storms were and how bad.

We lost our power at approx. 7pm Sunday evening when the first cell came through. Last night as I was trying to get the decrepid old generator going to try and save my freezer foods and scoop water out of my pool to flush my toilets (I'm on a well=no power, no water), our power came back on. I actually did a dance in my driveway and shouted "I have powerrrrrrrrr" (think He-man cartoon). I'm a dork, I know.

Our roof is missing more shingles, my privacy fence around the pool bit the dust, and my garden flooded. We'll turn the first two in on HO insurance and pray they come through for us as the roof has taken a lot of hits. We'll see how the garden does in the next two weeks. Hopefully my small seedlings will come back out and my seeds won't rot.

All in all, I'm very fortunate and I think its always a good reminder to take a moment and count your blessings and not just when Mr. Tornado passes you by. So today, take a moment to appreciate the good things in your life and tell those around you how much they mean to you.

Menu Monday

Unfortunately I have not planned out my menu very well this week for many reasons.

a) this is a short week as I'm off on Good Friday and will be shopping and baking for the Easter weekend, so I'm only thinking of food till Thursday night as the weekend is seperate in my mind this week.

b) we had tornadoes come through last night and we lost power. I did not get a chance to fix dinner and as we are still without power I may lose a good bit of my fridge and freezer foods. They told us this morning they have no idea when we will regain power.

So here's a tentative plan:

If my fridge items are okay:
Make the chicken burgers with coleslaw and sweet potato biscuits we didn't get to make last night.

If my freezer items are okay:
Make the Sweet Potato Shepherds Pie we didn't get to this weekend.

A large pot of spaghetti which will go for a few days.

I'll do a seperate post for Easter Weekend.

What's on your Menu this week?

McFatty Monday-Tornado Edition

So what does McFatty Monday and Tornadoes have to do with each other? Well thanks to the latter one, we lost power last night before dinner so I didn't eat which helped with the first one. LOL

In all seriousness though, scary stuff last night. I'm exhausted, still have no power, I feel dirty and gritty from not being able to shower. Everyone is safe though so that's good. A lot of destruction but as long as no serious injuries, its all good.

Speaking of good: My weight. Remember last week when I was up three pounds which was discouraging? Well two days later I weighed again and I was up four more pounds. (Up seven total) WTF. Then AF reared her ugly head and I said, "oh, that explains a lot."

This weekend, I busted my butt in the garden (which got washed away in the flooding of last night..arrgghh), and ate nothing but spinach and pea pasta with water. (Okay, I had a bowl of chocolate icecream yesterday afternoon).

As I stumbled into work this morning all bleary eyed from sleeping on my closet floor with three dogs and a cat on top of me for part of the night, I jumped on the scale to see if I was atleast back to my low point of two weeks ago. YES! Not only had I dropped that pesky water weight but I lost THREE MORE POUNDS!

WOOT! I'm down a total of THIRTY-EIGHT pounds! (yes, I'm screaming it). Maybe I can reach my goal after all. I need to be down 9 more pounds before April 8th. That's almost two weeks. That would be the best birthday present EVER!

So on this dreary, rainy day there is a bright spot of sun! YAY.

and as for Ms. Blair's questions:

What is your favorite work-out gear? What are your must-haves? (personally, I’m a big fan of shorts/shirts with zippered pockets for keys) Your favorite sneakers?

My favorite work out gear is a sports bra, spaghetti strap tank, and yoga pants or terri capri's. I want soft thin fabrics when I work out. My favorite sneakers are Addidas running shoes. Like you I need new workout gear. My pants are so big now they look like clown pants and bag out everywhere. My shoes are shot and my sports bra finally bit the dust. I am refusing to buy any clothes workout or regular until I reach that goal though. That's my treat for myself and all my hardwork.

Spinach Lasagna

I’ve been in the mood for spinach lasagna and have seen several recipes surfing around Food Network and blogs of late. None of them were quite exactly what I was looking for. I did not want the sauce to mimic my chicken lasagna with its tangy cream cheese. I chose to go with a simplified cheese sauce made from a standard roux but mix it with a traditional lasagna stuffing. What was produced was EXCELLENT! A great base to any veggie lasagna and I can’t wait to make this again. It went too fast. So fast, I didn’t even get a chance to snap a picture before we dug in. This is one recipe that will definately be added to the rotation.

Spinach Lasagna
Ingredients:
¾ of a container of Ricotta (about 11-12 ounces)
¾ cup of cottage cheese
1 egg
1 large bag of frozen chopped spinach (two-three of the boxes)
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
12 lasagna noodles (boiled till al dente in salted water)
1 stick of unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic minced
¼ cup flour
3 ¼ cups milk
1 ball of fresh mozzarella (3-4 ounces)
2 cups shredded mozzarella
1 1/2 ounces of fresh parmesan flaked

Directions:
In large mixing bowl, mix ricotta, cottage, egg, spinach and salt and pepper.

Melt butter in sauce pan and add onions for about 2-3 minutes. Add garlic and cook 1-2 minutes more. Add flour and stir until smooth and thick. (about 1 minute). Add milk and stir. Cook until sauce just coats the spoon. Add fresh mozzarella (lightly chopped into cubes) and parmesan. Stir until thick and mozzarella is just melting.

Add cheese sauce to spinach mixture and fold in until well mixed. Use a 9 x 13 pan and layer spinach sauce, then noodles, and repeat (about three times). Top with remaining sauce and shredded mozzarella cheese.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes until lasagna is bubbly and cheese crust is golden brown.