Take'n it easy...

Well, how was your weekends?  Ours was fantastically lazy.  I read and cooked, Kam lounged and watched baseball and the Olympics and Dex pouted waiting for his next walk.  Remember I mentioned something on Friday about possibly going to the peach festival?  Yep, didn't do that.  But I did manage to get over to Joann's Fabric and take advantage of their sale.  I got some $20 dollar-a-yard upholstery fabric for about $6 per yard.  Score!

Friday night I made a really yummy pasta salad and Saturday was pizza on the bbq.  I thought I'd share the main components that went into each, because they were both really good!

Ham and Honey Mustard Pasta Salad:
Cubed ham
Carrots, celery, red and green pepper
Graded cheddar
Honey mustard salad dressing combined with a little light mayo and low fat greek yogurt (and a few spices)
Served my favorite way for any pasta salad: on a bed of greens.  Usually I just use spinach, but this time I had my all time fav on hand... ARUGLA! So good.

Peach Prosciutto Pizza:
Pizza Crust
Red Sauce
Prosciutto
Mozzarella
walnuts
Fresh Peaches
topped with fresh basil and arugula

Hope you all have a good week planned.  We are going tonight to get locking gas caps because some butt nuggets keep syphoning gas from our neighborhood.  I know we've been hit at least twice.  On a better note, we sold our little floral love seat on craigslist last night!  Woop!  I thought I was going to have to give it away, but nope, cash in my pocket.  Have a great week everyone!

Sausage, Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna Rolls

I have seen these Lasagna roll ups here and there and decided I wanted to give them a try.  There are probably 200 different things you could fill them with, I just kind of used what I had. If you wanted to make them meatless, it would be really easy.  Or use white sauce instead of red.  Basically any way you make lasagna, you could roll instead of layer.  I was even thinking of making thanksgiving leftover lasagna roll ups.  Kam might explode with excitement over that one though....

Sausage, Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna Rolls
What you'll need:
8 Lasagna noodles cooked according to package (make 10 just in case one tears beyond repair)
1 package ground sausage (you could use ground beef, turkey or chicken too)
2 cups sliced mushrooms
4 cups fresh spinach
1 cup diced onion
3 cloves garlic minced
1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes (remove most of the oil and chop into smaller pieces)
1 teaspoon fresh cracked black pepper
1 teaspoon oregano
2 cups shredded mozzarella
1/2 cup parmesan reggiano
2 cups pasta sauce (if I wasn't making this after work I would have made homemade, but I went the quick rout today)

Begin boiling water and cooking noodles.  In a large frying pan, cook sausage until no longer pink. Remove some of the fat leaving about a tablespoon. Add onions and saute until tender and translucent.  Add mushrooms, spinach, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, pepper and oregano and cook on medium low until most of the moisture is out of the spinach and mushrooms.  About 10 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray. Lay 3 or 4 noodles onto a glass cutting board (or your counter will work too).  Spread a small layer of the meat mixture over each noodle. Leave about 2 inches of noodle bare.  Spread about 2 tablespoons of tomato sauce over meat and a thin layer of mozzarella.  Now starting at the end of the noodle with meat, fold the noodle over a tiny bit and begin to roll the bare end which will be the bottom.  If you work slow and steady, you shouldn't loose too much filling out the sides of the rolls.  Now use a spatula to transfer the roll into the pan.  You should have room for 8 rolls in your pan.  Cover each roll with 2 or 3 tablespoons more sauce and remaining mozzerella and parmesan reggiano.  Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes, removing foil for the last 10 minutes.

Love this flower pepper!  Love it!

This was a great dinner.  Lasagna with a different presentation.  They were even better the second day!  I think these would be really fun to serve guests.  Kam was my assistant for this one and when I have about half done rolling them, I asked him if he could do this.  He shook his head in a funny Kam way and said NO, No, no.  He was pretty stoked to eat them though! Enjoy!

Snow finally blanketed Spokane.  Now I hope we get 12 inches before Thanksgiving so we can go sledding at our friend's Eric and Julie's.  We are spending the beloved turkey day at their house this year, and they have THE BEST sledding hill!  Here is a photo of us from last year's sledding adventure.  We love them!

Happy saturday amigos!

Tuna* Pasta Salad with Avocado Dressing

*Because this is the last jar of home canned tuna, this recipe is dedicated to my dad. Because he is out, and now we are too.

This is such a basic dish.  Who hasn't had only pasta, tuna, and some sort of cream soup in the cupboard, and thrown together tuna noodle casserole.  When I was ages 16 through 20 I worked at a little home daycare, and I'm pretty sure I ate the left overs from the kid's tuna noodle at least once a week.  I don't think I've had it since.  So a tuna salad sounded good last night, brought on by my dad talking about his lack of tuna all weekend. I read somewhere yesterday about substituting mayo or yogurt in salad dressings for pureed avocado.  I was so intrigued that I had to think of something to try it with.  So here goes...

What you'll need:
4 cups pasta (use your favorite)
2 cans tuna (1 jar home canned, if possible)
1 cup diced cucumber
1 cup frozen peas (not defrosted)
1 cup cheese cubed (I used sharp cheddar)
1/4 cup fresh basil sliced thin
1 cup diced tomato (cherry tomatoes halved would be best)

Dressing:
1 avocado
1/2 of a lime juice
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
1/4 cup fresh basil
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon cumin
2 tablespoons pasta water (reserved from the cooked pasta)

Cook pasta with about a teaspoon salt in the water.  Once desired doneness, reserve at least 2 tablespoons of the starchy water for the dressing and run pasta under cold water. Once pasta is cool, add all salad ingredients into a large bowl.  In a blender or food processor add all dressing ingredients and blend until smooth.  Pour over salad and fold until everything is coated.  Be gentle to try and not break up the tuna chunks too much.

I'm thinking I might be experimenting further with the avocado dressing thing.  You don't get a lot of avocado flavor, but there is something really tasty and creamy going on there.  Yep, your definitely going to see that a few more times.  I think I might add a diced avocado to the salad next time to get a little more of the avocado flavor involved, but not totally necessary.  Enjoy!

Creamy Balsamic Pasta Salad

Friday night brats and a thrown together pasta salad.  This is one of those salads that you just dump stuff in a bowl, wing a dressing and have something better than you expected.  That is my favorite way to cook.  No recipe inspiration, just plain old dump cook.  Thanks mom for teaching me the way!  I mentioned our Friday night plans to go to the Spokane Indians game, we got there and it was sold out.  Bummer.  So we went to this little brewery that just opened up called the Budge Brothers.  They have potential, but need a little work.  You can tell that it's two brothers living their dream and neither them have a lady by the way they have their space is designed.  Just a few chairs around the of perimeter of the room, and a big open space where tables should be.  Kind of awkward.  But we did meet both brothers, which was cool.  Best of luck to them!  On to the salad!

What you'll need:
1 avocado diced
1/2 cucumber quartered and diced
1 head broccoli cut into small pieces
1/2 can olives halved
1 cup feta
1/4 cup fresh basil chopped
2-3 cups cherry tomatoes halved
3 cups pasta uncooked

Dressing:
1/2 cup plain greek yogurt
1/4 cup mayo (I always use the olive oil kind)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon celery seed
1 tablespoon lemon lemon juice

Cook pasta.  Once done, strain and run cold water over to cool completely.  Set aside.  In a large bowl add first 7 ingredients and cooled pasta.  In a smaller bowl, mix all dressing ingredients until smooth.  Pour over pasta and fold until everything is well coated and combined.  Place in fridge at let sit at least 2 hours before serving.  It really tastes 100 times better if you let it sit.  Trust me on that one!

I had to share this photo.  This is what I happens when I'm photographing blog pictures and Kam decides what he's making should be blogged too.  Artistic wiener photos.  I never know what I'll find when I dump the camera.  Thanks hun!

Left overs for lunch!  It's saturday morning and my coffee just finished brewing....have a fun weekend friends!  Enjoy!

Creamy Tomato Sausage Pasta

Another one dish wonder meal.  This one was simple but a little timely.  You have to let the sauce reduce reduce reduce, so it takes some time.  Other than that, just chopping and dumping.

What you'll need:

1 package or 1lb pasta (use your favorite)

1 pound sausage or 4 links cut into bite sized chunks (ours was spicy links)

2 heads broccoli

1 red pepper thinly sliced

1/2 onion

6 medium mushrooms sliced

1 can diced tomatoes

2-3 artichoke hearts sliced (Optional but recommended.  I had left overs from skewers)

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup sour cream

salt

pepper

3 garlic cloves chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon chicken bouillon

fresh basil

In a large pot, boil pasta with 1 tablespoon salt.  In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium high.  Add onion and sausage.  Cook until onion is translucent.  Once pasta is done, take one cup of the starchy pasta water and add one teaspoon of chicken bouillon to it.  Stir to dissolve.  Add chopped garlic to pan and cook for a few seconds.  Now add pasta water and tomatoes.  Leave at medium high and allow to by half reduce, about 15-20 minutes.  Stir occasionally.

Once visibly thickened, add milk and sour cream.  Mix until combined.  Allow to reduce for another 10 minutes or until sauce is a consistency you like but not too thick.  Add vegetables and pepper.  Mix until everything is coated.  Cover and allow to steam for 5 minutes stirring occasionally.  Once broccoli is crisp tender, add noodles and about 1/2 cup torn basil leaves.  Fold noodles into vegetable sauce.

Kam was so pasta satisfied that he took a picture of his empty bowl.

Bowl up.  We enjoyed this.  A lot.  I thought our spicy sausage was a little too spicy but Kam was all about it.  Next time I might add a little more sour cream, which you could do, maybe 3/4 cup instead of a half, but to keep calories down, stick to the recipe. Which I will probably do next time too.  Enjoy!

Strawberry Basil Pasta Salad

I love anything that you can turn from a dish into a meal.  Throw a few little extras into a simple salad, and in no time you have a side dish gone full meal deal.  This salad had a lot of different flavors going for it, but they all seemed to work together nicely.  I will definitely make this again.

What you'll need:
6 cups dry pasta (Your favorite kind. I bought mine in bulk, so I have no idea how many ounces it is)
1 small cucumber diced, about 2 cups
3 cups sliced strawberries
1 can white or navy beans rinsed
1 3oz package prosciutto thin sliced
15 medium to large fresh basil leaves sliced into strips
3/4 cup feta crumbles
1/2 cup + 1 tablespoon pesto
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cracked pepper
1 teaspoon sea salt
Bag of baby spinach

Cook pasta, rinse with cold water and set aside.  In a large bowl, add diced cucumber, sliced strawberries, beans, prosciutto, and basil.  Toss until combined.  In a small bowl combine pesto, olive oil, pepper and salt.  Once pasta is cool add to large bowl.  Pour pesto dressing over pasta and toss until everything is well coated.  Serve over a bed of spinach.

This was really quick and full of flavor.  I love the contrast of the salty prosciutto, the sweet strawberries, and the creamy beans.  Enjoy!