Mason Jar Salad- End of the Week

I survived grade 8 camp!!! There were wood ticks (too many to count), whiny kids, fun activities, kids who didn't sleep, and all sorts of strangeness. I even conquered the zip line! I have photos of that but since the harness is in no way shape or form flattering, I refuse to show them but I did it!  I am still catching up on sleep though. I hope to be all caught up by Monday! Unfortunately I did not bring any mason jar salads with me to camp (I really should have).  Fortunately Hubby made salads to get him through the week. He reports that the salads did indeed remain fresh and tasty the whole week. We are going to keep trying these out with some different combinations.

Friday's supper was a super simple tomato basil pasta using a recipe from Jamie Oliver's book "Jamie's Food Revolution". I sort of followed the recipe, making only a few adjustments to use up some things in my fridge.

While at the Red River General Store the other week, we picked up some locally made pasta. We chose a sun dried tomato fettuccine pasta. (If you haven't been, the Red River General Store is all about local, fresh products and lots of antiques! We bought asparagus from a farm in Thompson, MB, wild rice from Northern Manitoba, maple syrup from Mcreary, and Pasta From Steinbach, Manitoba!!! We pretty much covered 4 corners of the province in just one stop)

Okay, back to the recipe. (Sorry about that)

 Classic Tomato Spaghetti (page 43 in Jamie's Food Revolution, Jamie Oliver)
Printable recipe here

2 cloves garlic (I used 3)
1 red or green chile (I used dried because that's what I had)
 a small bunch of fresh basil (from the garden)
1 pound dried spaghetti (Or any noodle you'd like)
olive oil
1 can diced tomato (recipe said 14 oz, but I used a 28 oz can)
sea salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese (I had fresh mozzarella but no parm so I used that instead)

Peel and thinly slice the garlic and the chile (if using fresh). This is also a good time to wash and dry the basil.

Get the water for the past boiling and salted and get a skillet over medium heat. Drop the pasta in the water and then add 2 tbsp of olive oil to the skillet.  Add the garlic and chile to the oil and stir things up.  Once the garlic begins to brown, add most of the basil leaves and the tomatoes and season with salt and pepper.
As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain it and transfer to the skillet and stir it all up.

At this point I added some spinach to the pasta and some torn up fresh mozzarella (Because why not?).

Slice up the rest of the basil and top it off.

Let me tell you, rave reviews on this one.  The pasta had such a fabulous consistency.  I couldn't really taste the sun dried tomato but the pasta itself was fabulous. I will be buying it again.

I did manage to plant my celery that I had in my window sill.

Some other news in the Little Kitchen: Tuesday we pick up our first week's worth of fresh farm produce from our CSA. We joined a community supported agriculture program for the summer and are excited to see what we get this week.

In the mean time, I'm gonna go make some more jar salads!!

Until next time, stay dry and eat well!!!

Bacon, Pasta, and Power

Tonight was one of those nights I actually got some time to myself after work. I must admit it is a bit of a strange feeling.  The Boy is at school until 6:30 for driver's ed, Hubby has a class, and there was no rehearsal for the school production due to a meeting (that I didn't have to attend)!! What to do with that time??? I thought about having a nap but didn't think I would wake up until tomorrow morning. Instead I wandered over the the IGA by my house to browse the shelves and get some ingredients for dinner.  I had a recipe in the back of my head and had a quasi-mental list...okay, I confess, I checked a recipe in my new Jamie Oliver cook book and knew what I wanted to make.

The original inspiration for tonight's dinner was "mini shell pasta with a creamy smoked bacon and pea sauce". Such a long title but it was an easy peasy recipe and has bacon in it! Once I got to the store, I discovered that IGA didn't have fresh mint and things just got worse from there.  As I was at the dairy case, the power went out.  It did kind of throw me for a loop. It wasn't dark as it was actually still light out and there are windows but it still caused me to forget to grab some frozen peas and double check what I was getting as all the interact machines were down!

So I walked home from the powerless store to my powerless house and put my groceries away in my powerless fridge. With no power to cook supper, run the Internet, or heat the house I bundled up and walked over to my friend Marie's house.  We drank some beer so it wouldn't go bad....and she has three fabulous dogs that took turns sitting with me to keep me warm!!

The original recipe can be found on page 52 of Jamie Oliver's book Jamie's Food Revolution and calls for:

• 10 slices smoked bacon
• a small bunch of mint
• salt and pepper
• 1 lb mini shell pasta
• olive oil
• a pat of butter
• 2 cups frozen peas
• 2 tbsp creme fraiche or heavy cream
• 1 lemon
• 6 ounces Parmesan cheese

As some of you may know, I have issues following rules recipes so many times the recipe I start with is very different from what I actually cook.  I do like to use the recipes as a base idea and then add my own flair. The pasta dish I served up tonight included:
Printable recipe

• 1/2 lb bacon, cut into small pieces
• basil
• salt and pepper
• rotini pasta
• 1 cup frozen peas (dug in the freezer and found some)
• 2 tbsp half and half
• 1/2 lemon
• 2 cloves garlic (because hey, it's garlic)
• 1 cup chopped tomatoes in juice (I had some left over from the other day. I blitzed them with a hand blender first)
• sauteed mushrooms and asparagus (these were left over from last night's dinner. They had been sauteed in garlic and were fan-freaking-tastic)
• Parmesan cheese (I actually had some leftover from making the chicken fingers last week! It was about 1/2 a cup)

Put a pot of water on to boil, heat a skillet, and chop the bacon.

Saute the bacon until it is crisp. Drain the fat (or at least some of it).  Add the peas, mushrooms, and asparagus.  Also grate on a micro plane or use a press to add in the 2 cloves of garlic.  This is also a great place to add in a couple grinds of pepper.

To the pot of boiling water, add a hefty pinch of salt and plunk in the pasta.  Cook according to package directions.
Pour the tomatoes into the skillet along with some pinches of basil.  Let this boil down until the pasta is half cooked.

Add 2 tbsp of half and half to the skillet and stir.

Remove the pasta from the water and add it to the skillet.  Mix it all together and add the squeezings of half a lemon and the Parmesan cheese.

Serve with salad or veggies.

This dish received fabulous reviews from the boys and heated up nicely for Hubby when he got back from his class tonight.

 


Devour!

FYI, the power did go back on just before 6pm, after 2 hours.  Apparently the hydro company had to shut off the power so they could fix a hydro pole fire issue. 

Until next time, stay warm and eat well.

Dreaming of sunny weather and blue waters...

Sandwiches are Beautiful

Tonight's dinner was and simple spaghetti with a spicy mushroom bolognase sauce....sooooo yummy.  I really wasn't planning on posting anything about it.  I didn't take any photos of the process but then the Boy came in from the kitchen with his plate of food.  You may remember me mentioning before about the Boy's love of all things sandwich...he loves sandwiches.

Tonight the Boy made a spaghetti bolognase sandwich!  Oh yes he did....it actually looked really, really good all snug in between two thick cut slices of crusty French bread.

Yup, there it is....the spaghetti sandwich...This kid is so opening a sandwich shop one day....

On Top of Spaghetti, All Covered With Cheese, I Lost My Poor Meatball When Somebody Sneezed.

You know what I don't make as often as I would like?  Meatballs.  Spaghetti and meatballs to be exact!  Of course it is impossible for me to make just one dinner's worth of meatballs.  I must make extra for the freezer.  It seems now that the holiday season has passed and freezer space is no longer dedicated to baked holiday treats, it is time to fill it with dinner type goodness.  The some 10 dozen perogies I made yesterday will serve us well but a family cannot live on perogies alone (despite the attempts of a certain teen age boy).

Today was a busy day for stocking the freezer but the meatballs were also a part of tonight's supper.   I didn't feel like thawing the ground beef from the freezer so I sent the boy out to the store....he is so helpful.  This is one of those dishes that I make different every time I put it together.  I really have no measurements for this one.  Please bear with me.

Meatballs
In a small bowl, combine:

between 1/2 to 1 cup of bread crumbs (tonight I used panko because that is what I had)
enough milk or half and half for the crumbs to soak up

Not pretty, but it all adds flavour!

Let this sit for about 10 minutes.  In the meantime:

Grate 1 medium sized onion and place in a large bowl. (or grate the onion right into the bowl).
Using a micro plane or a garlic press, get 3 or 4 cloves of garlic into the mix.
Add 1 or 2 eggs, a healthy pinch of salt and pepper.
Don't forget the handful of grated Parmesan!!
Add the meat as well!Today I used a large family size pack of ground beef but a combo of beef and pork is good, so is ground turkey or chicken...use what you like!

Add the milk and breadcrumbs to all of this and mix it together with your clean hands.

I used a scoop to help portion out the meat balls.

 Bake in the oven at 350F for about 20 minutes.

If you forgot to tell your teen shopper to pick up lean ground beef, and had to use regular ground beef, there will be a lot of grease on the baking sheet.  Let the meatballs cool for 10 minutes then transfer to a paper towel lined sheet or to a cooling rack.  Once cooled, lay the meatballs in a single layer and freeze until solid.  Now transfer the frozen meatballs to a zip top bag or other freezer safe containment unit, label and place back in the freezer until you next spaghetti night!  (Meatballs thaw so well in your favourite sauce!)

A very simple sauce to go with your meatballs!

Heat a pan and add a tbsp or so of olive oil.  Now saute up 1 medium onion, chopped and 1/2 a bell pepper of your choice....today I had a yellow pepper so I used that.

Grate or press in 1 or 2 cloves of garlic and keep cooking for a minute or two.  Open up a 28oz can of crushed tomatoes and a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes and add this to the mix.

Pop in a bay leaf and let this simmer on low for about 15 minutes.
Next add about 24 meatballs and continue to cook on medium until the meatballs are heated through.

Enjoy with a helping of your favourite pasta.

A Field Trip and A Quick Dinner: Pasta Carbonara

Pasta Carbonara

 My sister and I should probably not be let out of the house together without proper supervision, especially when spending money is involved.  We went on a field trip to Costco today!!!!  It is way too easy to grab the things you want rather than the things you need at this place!  We wandered around, put things in the cart, thought about it, removed things from the cart...the same thing we do everytime we go.  I really don't have the room to store large boxes of items or too many extra things but my sister had a great idea and I don't know why we didn't think of it sooner!  We decided to split the cost of the items both families use on a regular basis. For instance I most likely won't go through 5 dozen eggs in a timely fashion but we split the cost and each got 30 eggs for a good price.  Ok, I will probably use up those eggs but I don't have the storage space. I don't do all of my shopping at Costco as they don't carry everything we need but it is a great place to stock up on items and for baking staples.  (Also to buy way too many things you don't need!)


Of course when it comes to field trips with my sister, we always get sidetracked and never get anywhere on time.  When if finally came time to make dinner, I was looking for something quick to make.  I thought of doing one of my favourites, breakfast for dinner, but then low and behold, on the pacakage of bacon (why not use bacon, I did afterall buy 4 packages of it today!), there was a recipe for a carbonara!  SWEET!

Bacon and eggs,Italian Style
(Pasta Carbonara a la Kirkland Signature bacon package)

1 lb bacon
1 lb pasta - tonight I used Soba noodles
3 eggs
1 cup grated parmesean
1/3 cup chopped parsely
1 tsp italian seasonings
pepper, salt to taste.

This is easy and quick!

First, chop and fry bacon until crisp.  While this is getting its crisp on, put a large pot of water on to boil.

Place the bacon aside on paper towels to drain.

Chop some fresh parsely (thankful to have my plant in the front window!) and measure out 1 cup of grated parmesean.

Crack 3 large eggs into bowl and beat away.

Mix the parmesean cheese into the eggs.



As soon as the pasta is cooked, drain and transfer to the bowl with the eggs and parmesean.

Now mix, mix, mix....or toss, toss, toss with your tongs to mix the eggs into the to cook the eggs.  (The hot pasta will cook the eggs enough to make a nice rich sauce!)

Add your parsely and the Italian seasoning and keep tossing.  Also add the bacon at this point, and mix. (Save some bacon for a garnish)


The boys enjoyed the pasta carbonara.  My son thought it was bland but liked the texture of the sauce. A google search netted basically the same recipe but I wonder if some garlic would have helped?
It was tasty.  So tasty.