The Best Pasta Dish EVER!

I’m a pasta girl. I would eat it every meal if I could and never get bored. The only thing about pasta though is you can only get so creative with it. I have tossed every veggie known to man in my pasta, I’ve made home made alfredo sauce(which it to die for BTW), home made red sauce, I’ve added different proteins, but the only thing I hadn’t done until yesterday was make chicken carbonara.

I am NOT a fan of bacon. Actually, I’m not a huge fan of any breakfast meat except for scrapple, but thats a different entry 🙂 I just never understood the point of eating the stuff since its 95% fat. I also didn’t like the flavor, which I am learning now is sometimes an acquired taste. Anyways, while making up my menu for this week I was searching for something different for dinner. I feel that sometimes I’m making the same thing every week and it gets boring. Normally, I wouldn’t make something this rich during the week because of my weight loss efforts. Lo and behold though, I found this recipe in my Comfort Classics Cookbook by Weight Watchers. I don’t think that its exactly like the original though. Yes, there is an egg in this recipe, the hot pasta and the hot pan you pour it into cooks it.

Anways…this stuff was awesome. Much better than I thought it would be. It was smokey and creamy and bacony and just all together wonderful.

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Chicken Carbonara

6 ounces pasta
3/4 cup fat free milk
1/3 cup Parmesan Cheese
1 large egg lightly beaten
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
4 slices of center cut bacon
1 small onion chopped
1 garlic clove minced
1 cup cooked chicken breast chopped.

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and keep warm. Meanwhile, whisk the milk, cheese, egg, salt and pepper in a bowl until blended.

Cook the bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat stirring occasionally until bacon begins to brown. Add the onion and garlic and cook until brown. Add the chicken and cook until heated through. Reduce the heat to a medium low, add the pasta and the milk mixture. Cook, tossing until the sauce is thickened and creamy.

chicken carbonara

Pasta Salad

I’ve really hit a wall lately when it comes to eating lunch. Usually I one of two things: English muffin pizzas or a veggie burger on an English muffin. Maybe, if I’m lucky and ambitious, I will go to subway. I love me some English Muffin pizzas but seriously, they can get boring. When what you are eating gets boring, you tend to eat whatever you can find to shake things up. In my case, this usually spells disaster because boredom usually leads to binging. Because of the tendency to binge, I have to have strict guidelines when it comes to lunch because I want to be able to eat a decent dinner. I strive to eat something filling that is below 6 Weight Watchers Points this is sometimes not easy to do because a lot of those healthy frozen meals tend to be between 6 to 8 points.

I recently bought a Weight Watchers cookbook that has healthy takes on traditional not good for you comfort food. I found this recipe for pasta salad. Pasta salad is one of those things that I hold near and dear. Any cookout I go to I immediately gravitate towards the pasta salad and/or macaroni salad, this is because no two people make the same kind of pasta or macaroni salad. My Aunt Marlene, just happens to make the best in the entire world. Her salad is the proverbial yard stick that I use to see how everyone else’s pasta salad measures up. She makes hers with rotini pasta, cubed mozzarella cheese, chunks of pepperoni, tons of Italian salad dressing, and salad supreme to taste. It is the best. Though, I wouldn’t want to know how many Weight Watchers Points that stuff is. It’s probably one of those things where the world is better off if the caloric information goes unsaid.

The recipe I found has mozzarella and cherry tomatoes in it. I, not being an avid fan of tomatoes decided to tweak this recipe. I threw in a jar of roasted red peppers because I love them and I’m still getting that red color. Also, instead of using an oily salad dressing you make your own flavorful dressing out of lemon juice, lemon zest (the yellow part of the lemon), olive oil, garlic, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. The result is a vibrant, tasty pasta salad that not only tastes good but looks like it should be served to you at either a posh Italian restaurant or one of those hella expensive spa resorts. The best part? If this is made with cherry tomatoes its only 142 calories per 3/4 cup serving! How wonderful is that?

I realize that a lot of the things that I post on here are Weight Watchers recipes. Weight Watchers to me, is one of the best things to ever come around. I have lost 56 pounds since having my son in September of 2007 and I owe it all to Weight Watchers. They teach you how to eat correctly and how to adopt a healthy lifestyle with out having to make huge sacrifices. I’m not someone who is being paid to endorse them, but if you are wanting to lose weight I urge you to go check out a meeting. I have a link to Weight Watcher’s in the link section of this blog be sure to check it out they have a function to find a meeting near you and you see what kind of specials they are running.

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Pasta Salad With Roasted Red Peppers and Mozzarella
(adapted from Pasta Salad with Tomatoes and Mozzarella from Weight Watcher’s Comfort Classics cookbook)

6 ounces whole wheat penne pasta (I used regular)
2 tsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves minced
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
2 tsp lemon zest
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
2 ounces fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
1 jar roasted red peppers cut up
1/2 cup fresh basil

Cook the penne according to the package directions. Drain and rinse under cold water, drain again.

To make the dressing, heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook stirring often until the garlic is golden. Transfer the oil mixture to a large bowl, stir in zest and lemon juice with salt and pepper. Add the pasta, cheese, roasted reds, and basil. Toss to coat.

Pasta Salad

Your Choices!

Here are the choices for the You Pick!

Italian Spaghetti Soup- pretty self explanatory

Caramel Pecan Bars- gooey brownie looking things

Strawberry Tiramisu- not quite the real thing but looks good

Chocolate Snackin’ cake- chocolate cake!

Remember to leave your choice as a comment!

Pulled Pork and Roasted Broccoli

I realize that in one of my previous posts that I said that I would let the readers choose a recipe from my huge folder and I would make it. Well you guys did an awesome job at that, you picked the ricotta gnocchi with spinach bake. I did make it, unfortunately, somewhere between making the recipe and coming here to sit down and blog about it, I lost it! So we’re going to start this again and I will make a separate post for that.

Anyways, not everything I make is homemade. Take last night for instance, we had pulled pork sandwiches. One of the best inventions EVER is the McCormick Slow Cooker Pulled Pork packet. You buy this little packet of goodness at the grocery store (It’s in the aisle with the taco seasoning, chilli seasoning, swedish meatball seasoning etc), you pick up a pork loin, mix the seasoning packet with I think it was brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar and dump it all into your crock pot and cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 6-8. When it’s done, all you do is take two forks and pull the pork. I can’t give a detailed description on how to do that but just pull it. This recipe can feed the entire brood on the cheap which in the current climate is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Now what I’m really super excited about is the veggie I made last night. I was reading the latest food network magazine and I came across this blurb about how roasted broccoli is the new black. I thought that sounded really good so on my weekly trip to Costco, I went and bought a huge bag of fresh broccoli.

I will admit that last night was not the first night that I did this. I made it a few days ago as well and um forgot to take a picture, what good is my blogging about food if I don’t attach a picture? So what I did was, I brought a large pot of water to a boil and once it boiled I dumped in two huge spoonfuls of minced garlic (It keeps your fingers from smelling like garlic and its easier to measure) into the water and then 4 cups of broccoli and I left it in the water for a minute. I drained my broccoli and transferred it to a big bowl where I tossed it with 4 teaspoons of olive oil and some Parmesan cheese. I transferred the broccoli mixture to a baking sheet and put it in the oven set to 450 for 15-20 minutes shaking the pan a few times so I got some even browning.

Let me tell you, roasting broccoli is the best way to cook it. It doesn’t smell like death like when you boil it or steam it, it keeps its beautiful green color, and best of all it’s tender and not mushy. It’s so tender in fact, that my husband, who only eats the tops, will actually eat the stems as well.

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Roasted Broccoli

4 cups fresh broccoli
2 tsp minced garlic (or more if you are a garlic fiend like myself)
4 tsp olive oil
Parmesan cheese to taste

Preheat your oven to 450. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Once boiling dump in the garlic and cook the broccoli for one minute and drain. Transfer broccoli to a large and toss with olive oil and sprinkle with cheese. Transfer to baking sheet and roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes.

roasted broccoli

Pulled Pork Sammich for the hell of it!

Kelly’s Mom’s Chicken

My mom was not a cook. She didn’t like to cook and she didn’t have time to cook so a lot of times dinner in our house was kind of like this: Spaghetti, Pizza, Spaghetti, More Pizza, Make your own sandwich night, Something frozen or out of a box, Pizza. I’m not dissing my mom in anyway. She was a very busy working mom and she was too tired to think about cooking most of the time and I cannot and will not hold that against her. As a matter of fact, there are two things that when she did cook, my dad, my brother and I couldn’t get enough of. One of these things is Beef Stroganoff, and the other is this chicken and dumpling dish.

The chicken and dumplings are the whole reason for this blog entry. She made this stuff every year on our birthdays and we were all in heaven. I remember milling around the kitchen the day that she would make this stuff and the anticipation was just excruciating. Because of that and a few other things that you will read about to come, I only make this stuff once every three years. Eating this stuff is such a mental hug, that I can’t make it any more than once every three years. Trust me it’s worth it! Nothing beats the feeling you get when you curl up on a brisk night with a bowl of it.

The other reason why I only make this stuff once every three years is the fact that it doesn’t have any nutritional value whatsoever. Sure, chicken has protein and all good stuff, but really its canceled out when you take into consideration some of the ingredients and the method that is used to cook it. First, the chicken is breaded with biscuit mix and some spices. This chicken needs to be bone in skin on chicken or else it just won’t hold up. Don’t try to use boneless skinless breast, you will be utterly disappointed and think this recipe is crap. Next you fry that chicken in a big huge pot in shortening AND butter. I have never tried to fry it in anything else why mess with this tradition? Once you get this chicken nice and brown and crispy you take it out and in the pan with all that yummy grease, you add 2 cans of cream of chicken soup and three cups of milk and you wisk that all together and you put your chicken back in and you simmer it for an hour.

After the hour is up you want to make up your dumplings. As disclaimer I will warn you that these dumplings are more biscuit-y than noodley. You will not find these on any menu at the Cracker Barrel or probably any other establishment that sells country cuisine. In fact, I don’t even know where my mom got this recipe. Anyways, you want to make your dumpling mix out of biscuit mix, milk and poultry seasoning. I will admit that I did tweak this a bit. I used Penzey’s Mural of Flavor because my poultry seasoning disappeared into thin air. After you mix your dumplings though, you want to drop them into the bubbling chicken mixture by the spoonful and cook them uncovered over low heat for 10 minutes and then you want to cover and cook them for another 10. Then you can eat and enjoy this stuff like I have for years. You might feel a bit dirty for eating something do rich and decadent, but at the same time you will feel amazing.

**Disclaimer** This recipe is being copied directly out of her hand written cookbook I apologize if its kind of jumpy

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Kelly’s Mom’s Chicken and Dumplings

1 c biscuit mix
2 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp pepper

Combine all the above ingredients and use it to coat 2.5 to 3.5 pounds of chicken parts.

Melt 2 tbsp shortening and 1 tbsp butter. Brown chicken pieces and remove from pan. Add 2 cans cream of chicken soup and 3 cups of milk. Put chicken back in sauce and simmer for one hour.

Dumplings
2 cups biscuit mix
2/3 cup milk
1/4 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp parsley flakes

Mix and drop by spoonfuls into hot soup mixture. Cook uncovered over low heat 10 minutes then cover and cook 10 more minutes.

Kelly's Mom's Chicken and Dumplings

So um…yeah.

I realize that I have been noticeably (or noticeably) absent as late. It’s been a combination of forgetting to take pictures of what I have been cooking, being incredibly lazy, and just not having a lot of time to sit down to write.

I have decided to shake things up a bit. To keep me inspired and less likely to go back to the same old and to make this a little bit interactive and to keep my readers on their toes. I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that I had a huge bugling folder of randomly recipes that I have collected and never did anything with. So with that, I will select 4 recipes and I will set up a poll where you, the reader, can tell me what you would like me to cook. I will close the poll on Thursday so that I can put it on my weekly menu and shop for it and make it (hopefully) the next day and blog about it that following menu.

Sooo…here are our choices in the order that I randomly pulled them:

1) Ricotta Gnocchi and Spinach Bake ( an awesome looking creamy cheesey baked pasta)

2) Chicken Pasta ( short pasta with chicken and peas)

3) Chocolate Panna Cotta (a dessert that is a cross between jello, pudding, and mousse)

4) Sausage Pizza Dip (a hot dip consisting of Italian sausage, tomato sauce, and cheese)

****EDIT****** A poll should go here but I can’t figure out how to work the damned thing. So leave your vote as a comment. And seriously, don’t be apathetic, thats just lame.

Oh and Don’t think you will never see the losers again, they will make appearances until you vote them in!

The Folder of DOOM!