Lemon Cream Sauce

This sauce is just a few ingredients and is really easy to put together. Letting it cook down is the key. It makes the sauce thick and intensifies the flavours. It would go great with pretty much any protein. Toss it all together with some pasta and I bet you'll feel like me in never wanting to eat pasta at Olive Garden again.

Ingredients:
1 clove garlic, grated
1 T olive oil
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
Zest of 1 lemon
1 c half and half (could also use cream, but the half and half makes a full, rich sauce and is way lower in calories)
Salt and pepper to taste
8 ounces cooked pasta

Heat olive oil in pan over medium heat. Add grated garlic and let cook until just fragrant, about 20 seconds. Add the pepper flakes and stir. Add the lemon zest and half and half. Stir to combine and let simmer, uncovered, for about 40 minutes. Stir occasionally during this time. Remove from heat and toss with pasta

Fancy Mac and Cheese

I love fancy food. Fancy food to me just means that there is something to take a dish over the top or make it special. This mac and cheese is FANCY. Well, as fancy as mac and cheese can get anyway. Onions, garlic, lemon, ham, and garlicky bread crumbs on top make for such a good mac and cheese. This takes a little more time than I usually spend on dinner, but it makes a lot and it was definitely worth the work.

Ingredients:
1 T garlic oil (directions below)
1/2 red onion, minced
4 c half and half
1/4 tsp dried thyme
Zest of 1/2 a lemon
5 roasted garlic cloves, minced (directions below)
1/2 c grated Parmesan
2 c shredded Cheddar
4 ounces cooked ham, cubed
1 pound pasta, cooked al dente
1 c Italian bread crumbs
1/2 c grated Parmesan
2 T garlic oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Roasted garlic and garlic oil: In a small oven proof dish, like a ramekin, put 5 garlic cloves and 3-4 T olive oil. Season with a little salt and pepper and cover with foil. Bake at 375 for about 30-35 minutes. Let cool and then you can use oil and garlic

Heat 1 T of garlic oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. When oil is shimmering, add minced onion and cook until tender. Add half and half, thyme, zest, and the minced roasted garlic. Cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes, until it's reduced almost by half. Add the first of the Parmesan and the Cheddar. Stir until all combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add the ham and toss in the pasta. Preheat oven to 350. Put pasta mixture in a greased baking dish. Combine the bread crumbs and rest of the Parmesan. Spread evenly over pasta. Drizzle remaining garlic oil over top to help brown the breadcrumbs and give flavor. Bake for 20 minutes.

Meatless Mediterranean Pasta

This is a great meatless meal! My favourite flavours, crisp zucchini, and soft buttery beans with salty feta in every bite... This one is a keeper

Ingredients:
8 oz pasta (use whole grain pasta for extra protein)
1 T olive oil
1 medium zucchini, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
10 grape tomatoes, quartered
1 can cannelini beans, drained
1 small can of sliced black olives, drained
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 c reserved pasta water
1/2 c crumbled feta
1 T chopped fresh basil

Cook pasta according to package directions. Heat up olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add sliced zucchini and cook for about 2 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds. Add beans, tomatoes and olives. Cook for about 5 minutes and add drained pasta and reserved pasta water.  Stir to combine, season to taste and add feta and basil.

                                                   

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

We have been trying to grocery shop only a couple times a month because Costco is far away, driving anywhere takes forever, and we have to give up a parking spot and try and find a good spot when we get back, and it's just a big headache. So my pantry has become my best friend helping us not make the weekly trek to the store. This is one of my favourite panty meals. We always have frozen shrimp in the freezer, but this would also be good with chicken, shrimp just cooks so quickly. In the time it takes to boil water and cook pasta, dinner is done!

Ingredients:
12 oz Penne pasta
1 T olive oil
1 T butter
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound shrimp (peeled and cleaned)
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp crush red pepper flakes or to taste
Chopped parsley

Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook pasta according to package directions. While the pasta is cooking, add olive oil and butter to a skillet and heat over medium. Once the butter is melted, add the shrimp and cook for about 2-3 minutes on the first side. Flip to the other side. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, until pink and opaque. Remove shrimp from the skillet. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Add the whole can of tomatoes (juice and all) to the skillet and season with salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes. Keep the heat at medium and cook for about 5 minutes. Once the sauce is a little bit thickened, add the cooked and drained pasta to the sauce. Toss to combine and add the shrimp. Serve with chopped parsley if desired.

Pinterest Win-Cinnamon Rolls

One of Greg's favourite treats is cinnamon rolls. But they're kind of labour intensive and my mom scared me away from yeast doughs/breads. But my sweet hubby deserves his favourite treat! Last year I tried my hand at cinnamon rolls for the first time. They were good, but not great. Better than store bought, but not the best cinnamon rolls ever and if you're going to take the time to make cinnamon rolls, they should be the best cinnamon rolls ever! My grandma's cinnamon rolls are the best cinnamon rolls I've ever had, but her recipes are not really recipes. "A little of this, just enough of this until it feels right," etc. So Pinterest to the rescue. I found this recipe for Cinnabon copycat cinnamon rolls and hoped for the best! It did NOT disappoint. The bread was soft and fluffy, they were buttery and cinnamony... Mmmmm... We had to use A LOT of self control not to eat 3 in one sitting. Definitely worth the work and time that went into them.

Pumpkin Cheesecake Mousse Pie with Gingersnap Crust

Every year my family celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving by doing a big family dinner at my Grandma's house the Sunday before Canadian Thanksgiving. Canadian Thanksgiving is next Monday so I'm sure my family will be celebrating next Sunday. But we're in Boston now and Greg's birthday is next weekend so I decided we'd do a little celebration yesterday so we could celebrate early! By celebrate, I mean I made a pie and we ate pie. Pretty good celebration if you ask me!

One of my favourite things to do is combine desserts. I found this recipe for pumpkin cheesecake mousse on Pinterest and it looked so good! But I wanted a little textural difference, and plus, for Thanksgiving, you need pie! I noticed in her recipe, she had graham cracker crumbs in the mousse. So I thought about leaving those out and doing a graham cracker crust instead. But I don't really like graham cracker crusts that much. What about ginger snaps?! That's a very fall cookie and it's nice and crisp. I was pretty sure I'd seen someone make a crust out of ginger snaps on Pinterest or Food Network so I thought it'd be a safe "risk." It was delicious! The spicy ginger crust was so crunchy and was delicious with the soft and creamy mousse.

Crust:
3-4 c crushed crunchy ginger snaps (I just used store bought!)
6 T melted butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the ginger snap crumbs in a large bowl and drizzle in half of the melted butter. Stir to combine and then drizzle in the other half of the butter. Stir to combine and then feel with your hands when it's ready. You want it to be a wet sand consistency. That means it's crumbly but when you get a handful of crumbs and hold it together, it holds its shape. Press it into the bottom and up the sides of a 9 inch pie plate. Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes. Check it at 20 minutes just in case. Let cool and then fill.

Honey Lime Grilled Shrimp

Marinades and rubs are so great. It's an easy way to impart a lot of flavour into your food. And you can experiment and make whatever marinade or rub you want! You might get some not great ones when you're first trying it out, I know I had some rough ones!, but pretty soon you'll be able to throw something together and it will be delish! And the nice thing is, when you find a recipe you like, you can usually use that same recipe for chicken, pork, beef, whatever! This marinade for the shrimp I made last night is one of those that I just saw what I had on hand and mixed it together. It was one of my favourites that I've made. I would caution that if you want to use this marinade on another protein, you leave the honey out until it's almost done cooking and then just drizzle it on. Shrimp take so little time to cook the honey doesn't burn before the shrimp are done, but if it was on chicken or pork or something else, it might burn before the inside of the meat is cooked.

Ingredients:
12 oz peeled and deveined shrimp
Zest of 2 limes, juice of 1 lime (add more juice if wanted)
1 T vegetable oil (I usually use olive oil but veg oil has a higher smoke point and I wanted to cook these at a high temp)
2 cloves finely minced or grated garlic
2 T honey
Salt and pepper to taste

In a bowl combine all ingredients except the shrimp. Mix well to combine. Add shrimp and marinate for about 15-20 minutes. You don't want to do it too long because the lime juice will start to cook the shrimp. Heat up a grill or grill pan and get it pretty hot. If using a grill pan, you want it to just start smoking before you put the shrimp on. Cook for about 2 minutes per side or until the outside is pink and it's cooked through.