Bruschetta Pasta

Today was 100 degrees. 100 degrees!! When you're outside in that kind of heat it makes you not want to do anything. Especially cook dinner. And I mean a real dinner, a salad isn't a dinner! Fortunately today is meatless Monday so I didn't need to cook any meat which always makes my kitchen soooo hot. So I made one of my favourite meatless meals! I don't know where my mom got this recipe but I love it! It's healthy which always makes me feel good. And it's tasty! It's really fresh and bright and a little spicy from the garlic and basil. And this is so easy! It's just cutting and chopping and stirring, done!

Ingredients:

1-1 1/2 pounds Roma tomatoes, seeds removed and chopped into small pieces

1/2 can black olives, sliced

Juice from 1 lemon

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil 

1 tablespoon basil, sliced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 pound whole wheat pasta

In a medium bowl, combine chopped tomatoes, sliced olives and minced garlic. Stir well and add lemon juice and olive oil. After it's mixed well, add basil. Season to taste. Cook pasta according to package directions. While pasta is cooking, refrigerate sauce to let the flavours marry together. 

Grilled Lemon Pepper Chicken

Boneless skinless chicken breasts are one of my favourite proteins. They're full of protein, good for you, and when they go on sale, they're cheap! But when we eat chicken two times a week, it can get old. I love trying new things with chicken to help mix it up. I found this recipe for lemon pepper chicken and thought it would be delicious! I made a few adjustments though. I loved the result. The chicken was moist, flavorful, light, and super easy! I served it with brown rice and while the brown rice was cooking, I made the marinade, let the chicken marinate and then grilled it up all while the rice was cooking. The marinade took all of 5 minutes to put together, it was great!

Ingredients:
1 pound chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon Worcestershire
1 tablespoon lemon pepper
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 cloves garlic, smashed

In a small bowl mix the olive oil and lemon juice, mix well. Add the Worcestershire, lemon pepper and pepper and stir until combined. Put chicken in a resealable bag and add marinade. Throw in smashed garlic cloves and mix well to coat chicken thoroughly. Refrigerate for no longer than 30 minutes, the lemon juice will begin to cook the chicken. After half an hour, skewer chicken pieces and grill until cooked through.

Chicken Apple Sausage and Basil Cream Fettuccine

Every couple of weeks, one of our grocery stores has sausage go on sale every couple of weeks and their chicken apple sausage always looks really good but have never tried it before. I decided to get one link and try it out! I thought it would be really yummy to do in a pasta dish. It turned out really well! The sausage was a little sweet with a little residual heat. The sauce was creamy and super flavourful! This lunch was about $2 a serving, less than 20 minutes to make, and tasted better than something that would have cost five times as much at Olive Garden.

Ingredients:
1 chicken apple sausage link
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 c of chicken stock
1 cup half and half
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
6 ounces fettuccine

Take the sausage out of the casing and cook up over medium high heat. Crumble it up well. When the sausage is done cooking, pull it out and let it drain on a plate lined with paper towel. Turn the heat down to medium and add the garlic to the sausage grease. Sauté for about 30 seconds and add the chicken stock. Stir well while pouring in the stock to help pull up the yummy brown bits from the sausage. Start cooking the pasta and cook according to package directions. When the stock has reduced by about half, add the half and half and stir well. When pasta is about half done cooking, add the Parmesan and put sausage back in the pan. Bring to a boil and let simmer. When pasta is done, drain it and add to the sauce. Remove from heat and add basil.

Why I Blog

When I first started cooking a little and the more I cooked, I realized that I wanted a place I could save my recipes. I spend so much more time on the computer than I do with a notebook handy it just made sense to put those recipes on my blog. After a couple of years of this, I found it was getting super difficult to find recipes on my blog in the midst of all the posts. I decided to start fresh and clean so I can just have one post per recipe and find what I'm looking for. I love blogs because it's a great way to combine journals and scrapbooks and I haven't been good at doing either ever. I especially love food blogs because I feel like so many of the best moments in life are when friends and family come together and share a great meal and those moments should be documented. When looking back on great family dinners, you might not always remember what you had to eat, but when you sit down for a good home cooked meal, those memories help make it feel like home. Writing down recipes and passing them on is one of the best things. I can't wait for the day I'll be able to make my grandma's homemade applesauce or my bestemor's (Norwegian for grandma) Norwegian pancakes for my kids. What a special thing to be able to pass down. That's why I blog. I want to keep track of these food experiences, I want to write down these recipes so I can perfect and share with loved ones.