Recipe #11: Pesto Pasta (Part I)

So, I actually made this dish a while ago...probably sometime in April or May. I had been craving pesto for a while, and had just read an article about how it originated in Cinque Terre! Perf! I looked online and found a recipe for pesto by Lisa's favorite, Ina Garten (aka Barefoot Contessa). And honestly, it was the best pesto ever!

I had only made pesto once before, and while it was yummy, I found it to be a bit bitter. So, here's the recipe we used. The recipe is actually for a pesto pasta salad (more on this later), so the pesto recipe below is going to include a few other ingredients that were added (and made it really really yummy!).


Pesto ingredients:
-1/4 cup walnuts
-1/4 cup pine nuts
-9 garlic cloves, chopped
-5 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
-1 tsp kosher salt
-1 tsp black pepper
-1 1/2 cups good olive oil (she always says good olive oil in her show)
-1 cup freshly grated Parmesan
-1 (10 oz) package frozen chopped spinach, defrosted and squeezed dry
-3 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
-1 1/4 cup good mayonnaise

In food processor, blend walnuts, pine nuts and garlic for 15 seconds. Add basil leaves, salt,
and pepper. With the processor running, slowly pour the olive oil into the mixture. Add the Parmesan and puree for a minute.

Here it is before adding the "extra" ingredients

(using 1 1/2 cups of pesto) Puree the pesto, spinach, and lemon juice. Add the mayo and puree. And that's it!

YUM! Nice and creamy and not at all bitter!

I actually found this recipe because I was looking for a pasta dish with pesto and peas, and came across this, and it had awesome reviews. So, using her recipe as a guideline, we made a hot pasta (hers was for room temperature/cold), and it turned out super yummy!



I don't remember exactly what we did with this recipe, but I do know two things for sure: I definitely used extra Parmesan, and I did not use as much mayonnaise as the recipe calls for. Oh, and I used extra garlic, because I always do. Anyway, it turned out really well, and I can't wait to make the pesto again!

Cabbage Soup Diet: Day Zero

I've been planning on losing some weight before my Europe trip, and well, I leave in 15 days and haven't exactly been losing weight. So I've decided it's time for the Cabbage Soup Diet (CSD) - love up to 10 pounds in 7 days! Read about it here.

I've done the CSD twice-ish before....once was successful, and once I stopped after 2 days (but I blame Ryan for that....somehow he convinced me that tator tots were an okay substitute for the baked potato. It went downhill from there).

The successful attempt was the first time I went on the CDS. I actually lost 10 pounds in the week I was on it, but it definitely wasn't easy. I will give a brief overview of what the plan looks like (from memory, check the link above for a more accurate schedule).

Day 1- eat the soup and any fruit except for bananas. Drink water and unsweetened tea
Day 2- eat the soup and any vegetables you want, but try to stay away from corn, peas, and beans. Same drinks. Oh, and you can eat a baked potato for dinner, but I didn't do this before, and probably won't this time either.
Day 3- eat the soup and fruits (no bananas) and veggies (avoid peas, corn, beans). Same drinks.
Day 4- eat the soup, bananas and skim milk. THIS IS THE WORST DAY
Day 5- eat the soup, beef (real food!), and tomatoes. Drink lots of water this day
Day 6- eat the soup and beef (as much as you can eat!! They say you can eat 2 or 3 steaks if you want)
Day 7- eat the soup, vegetables, and brown rice. Same drinks as before.

And that's it! It sounds pretty easy...and it's only 7 days. But it is definitely a HARD 7 days, trust me. The soup is okay at first. But you start to get sick of it pretty quickly, and you start to notice that you're not really eating anything that's going to give you energy. I remember being super worn out and grumpy when I did this diet in the past. Oh, and quick confession...on the 6th day I actually ate some bread. I bought a mini loaf thing from safeway, and ate it, and felt MUCH better.

Anyway, Day Zero was all about getting prepared for the next 7 days. First of all, I had to make the soup. Below is the recipe I used, which is actually from Weight Watchers. And I should mention that I don't actually have the recipe in front of me, so this is from memory. If there are any major problems, I'll probably come back and edit it. The CSD site has a recipe, but I didn't think it was as good as this one.

Cabbage Soup (4 - 1 cup servings)
-1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage
-2 garlic cloves
-1/2 cup yellow onion
-1/2 cup carrots
-1/2 cup zucchini
-1 tsp oregano (dried)
-1 tsp basil (dried)
-1/4 tsp salt
-3 cups broth (beef, chicken, or vegetable)
-1 tsp tomato paste

First you heat up the onions, garlic, and carrots in cooking spray on low heat for about 5 minutes. I did it for much longer (and waited to put the garlic in) because I wanted to make sure the onions were not too raw. Then add in the cabbage, oregano, basil, salt, tomato paste and broth. Bring to boil and then cover and simmer for about 15 minutes. Then, throw in the zucchini and heat for another 3-4 minutes.

Not too bad! I ended up tripling-ish the recipe, but used more or less of certain ingredients. Anyway, I'll keep you all updated with short recaps of each day (mostly to remind myself how it was, should I ever attempt this again!).

Cooking at Whole Foods

So, yesterday (false) a few days ago (false) a few weeks ago (false) 4 months ago (ding ding ding, yep, it's been a looong time since I started this post!), my work team went to Whole Foods to participate in a cooking class! I had no idea Whole Foods even offered this....but they do! Before we got there, it was decided that we would do the "Pacific Rim Fusion" menu, which consists of:

Waterfall Salad

Firecracker Shrimp

Thai Chicken Green Curry


Five Spice Beef Sate

Sesame Rice


Grilled Plantains with Coconut Milk over Ice Cream

Believe it or not, I actually worked on the Five Spice Beef Sate. Obvi not my first choice, but honestly, I didn't really care too much. Anyway, unfortunately I don't have too many pictures of the "during" phase....I thought I would look like a freak in front of my co-workers if I pulled out my camera and started snapping away at the food. Well, by the time everything was almost done, I ended up doing it anyway, because I had to have some pictures!

The recipe I'm going to share with you is the Firecracker Shrimp. It was by far the best thing we had! The beef sate that I made, with the help of others, was tough and not well flavored. I mean, how could it have been? The marinade soaked in for all of 5 minutes, when it should have been AT LEAST over night! And the chicken curry....not much flavor, unfortunately. Oh, and I should mention that I did not try the dessert for two reasons: 1) Lent and 2) plantains (vom). Ok, so here's the recipe for the shrimp:

Firecracker Shrimp
-1/3 cup sliced or whole almonds
-2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and halved
-1 bunch cilantro
-6 scallions, cut into 2-inch lengths
-3 garlic cloves
-2 tsp cumin
-1/8 cup olive oil
-1/4 cup water
-2 lb medium to large shrimp, peeled and deveined
-1 tbsp olive oil (for the pan)
-1/8 cup lemon juice
-sea salt to taste

Place almonds, jalapenos, cilantro, scallions, garlic, cumin, olive oil, and water in a food processor and blend for 1 minute, until a smooth paste is formed. Marinate the shrimp in the refrigerator in a covered container for at least 1 hour in the paste (this definitely did not happen when we were cooking, and they still tasted super yummy!).

Heat olive oil over moderate heat in a large saute pan. Saute shrimp, stirring continuously for 4 minutes, until pink and opaque. Deglaze plan with the lemon juice, and season with salt.

The recipe is taken straight from the pamphlet we got from Whole Foods. Since I didn't actually make this dish myself, I can't offer any insightful hints. But the shrimp was definitely the favorite!

Ok, so clearly I haven't been blogging much in the past few months, but I'm going to try to pick it back up because I have a few more yummy recipes to share, a few scrapbooking projects, and, of course, plenty of info on my upcoming Europe trip (21 days until I leave)!!

Recipe #10: Fusilli with Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Artichokes and Sausage

And goat cheese toast! I didn't think all of that would fit in the title.

This meal is probably one of my favorites! Both recipes can be found on foodnetwork.com (compliments of Giada de Laurentiis). We've probably made this 7 or 8 times.

First the goat cheese toasts. These are super easy to make. In fact, you don't really need to "make" much! Start out with one of those skinny french baguettes. Cut them up into pieces, maybe about 1/2 inch wide or so. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil on each piece, and put them in the oven for about 15 mins at 375 degrees.


Meanwhile, make the goat cheese mixture to go on top! You need 8 oz of goat cheese and 4 oz of cream cheese (or whatever you have, but approximately 2:1, goat cheese to cream cheese). We buy the goat cheese with herbs in it already, but feel free to buy anything. Mix together the cream cheese and goat cheese, and really, add any herbs that you like. I forget what the recipe calls for, but we always add thyme, chives, lemon zest, garlic, salt and pepper. Yum!


Once the bread is done in the oven, simply spread the goat cheese mixture on top of each one.

So easy! And you're done.

Now the main course: Fusilli pasta with artichokes, sun-dried tomatoes, and sausage. For those of you who, for some reason, hate fusilli pasta (Alex....), you can substitute whatever pasta you like! I actually first found this recipe online, but she has the exact same one in one of her cookbooks, except she uses penne instead. But lucky me: fusilli is my absolute favorite!

Ok, so the ingredients:
3/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, packed in the oil (you need the oil for the sausage)
2 (8oz) packs of frozen artichoke hearts
1 lb hot italian sausage
1 3/4 cup chicken broth
1/2 cup dry white wine
2+ cloves of garlic
1/3 cup fresh basil
1 lb fusilli pasta
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
8 oz mozzarella cheese
salt and pepper

Take 2 tablespoons of the "sun-dried tomato oil" and heat it up in a large pan. Place the sausage into the pan, and cook until it's completely done (about 8 minutes). Transfer the sausage to a plate, but leave the oil in the pan.

So, I didn't take the best pictures, which can be seen by the one above. Haha, you probably didn't really want to see that plate of meat, but too bad =)

In the same pan (with the oil), put in the 2 cloves of chopped-up garlic (or more) and the frozen artichoke hearts. Mix them around in the oil, and leave them in there for a few minutes. Next, pour in the chicken broth, wine, and sun-dried tomatoes. Stir occasionally and let simmer for about 8 minutes.

Meanwhile, grate the parmesan cheese and cut the mozzarella cheese into little cubes. Oh also, start cooking the pasta! I accidentally started it too late last night, so the above mixture was simmering for twice as long as it should have. I'm not sure it did anything, except maybe make it so that there was less sauce available for all that pasta!

Once the pasta is done, drain the water, but do not rinse. Put the pasta, sausage, parmesan cheese and basil into the same pan as the rest of the stuff. Let it all heat up, and then throw in the mozzarella cheese.


Keep it on the heat until everything is melted and heated through. Enjoy!

Picture from the first time I made this dish. It looks like I forgot about the basil, oops!

Recipes #6, #7: Chicken Parmesan & Zucchini with Parmesan

Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to make dinner, since I rarely have time during the week. Ryan's mom bought me two cookbooks for Christmas: Giada's Kitchen: New Italian Favorites and Barefoot Contessa Family Style. Those of you reading this probably know about my obsession with Giada (and Lisa's obsession with Barefoot Contessa, haha). Well, I decided to try something semi-new, and go with Ina Garten for tonight's dinner.

The zucchini with parmesan was taken directly from the Barefoot Contessa cookbook. Here's what you need:

8 medium zucchini

Good olive oil

2 large yellow onions

Salt and pepper

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

First, cut the onions and zucchini. For the zucchini, cut them lengthwise, and then cut smaller pieces, like this:

Next, heat up 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan and add the onions. I'm going to confess....I cut up the first onion and saw how much there was, and decided to only use one. I'm slowly learning to like (cooked) onions, so I didn't want to overdo it. And after I was all done, I was quite glad I didn't add that second onion. Anyway, you want to cook these for at least 10 minutes on medium-low heat, until they start to brown. Another confession: I cooked them for about 20 minutes. I wanted to make sure they were completely cooked. But if you aren't like me and don't need your onions to be 100% tender, then 10 minutes should be just fine!

After the 10 (or 20) minutes are up, add half of the zucchini, 1 tsp of salt and 1/4 tsp of pepper. Toss occasionally for 10-15 minutes. I ended up adding all of the zucchini, since I didn't want to deal with the two batches. The reasoning behind two separate batches is because they end up more "steamed" then "sauteed"....oh well, whatevs!

After the veggies have been cooking for the 10-15 minutes, add in the parmesan cheese and cook for an additional 30 seconds. Now, ideally, I think the cheese is kind of supposed to brown the veggies, but this didn't exactly happen. Oops. Maybe because I added too much olive oil (I'm convinced I did, because I didn't use two onions....the whole time it just kind of seemed like there was too much) or maybe because I ignored the recommendation to cook the zucchini in two separate batches. Oh well! The parmesan cheese (oh, and of course I added more than 1/2 cup, since I'm cheese-obsessed) ended up melting, instead of browning anything. But it was okay because they tasted yummy! Here's the end result:

So now onto the main dish! I've made this chicken parmesan a few times before. It's a recipe that oringated from Ina Garten, but Ryan's mom taught me how to finish the dish a little differently, which is the way I did it tonight. Here's what you're going to need:

6 skinless boneless chicken breasts (I always just buy the 4 pack from Foster Farms)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups seasoned dry bread crumbs
1/2 freshly grated parmesan cheese (ok...I just use the kraft stuff for this)
unsalted butter
good olive oil
mozzarella cheese
Prego traditional tomato sauce

You start out the same as my last recipe, where you take the chicken breasts and cut off the fat and pound them until they are about 1/4 inch thick.

In case you're curious, here's the tool I use for pounding.

I swear that's the toughest part of this recipe. Next, you take out two plates and a bowl. On the first plate, mix the flour, salt and pepper. In the bowl, beat the eggs with a tablespoon of water. On the second plate, mix the breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese. Then, you take each chicken breast, coat it in the flour, dunk it in the egg mixture (make sure it gets everywhere) and then cover it all over with the bread crumb-cheese mixture.

After coating the chicken breasts.

After that's done, heat up 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a large pan. Cook each chicken breat for a few minutes on medium-low heat. I probably let them cook for about 4 minutes on each side, but of course it depends how thick they are.

When I first put them into the pan.

After flipping them over. Yum, nice and brown!

I cut the chicken breasts in half, so I ended up with 8 altogether. Therefore, I did them in two batches when I first cooked them. Once all of them are cooked and transferred to a plate, pour some of the Prego sauce into the same pan. But be careful! It may spray up at you...

Anyway, when I normally make this, there is always pasta. But for some reason, I chose not to make pasta tonight. So usually the extra sauce left over in the pan is mixed in with the pasta. You can just pour as much sauce into the pan as you think you need to coat the chicken and mix in with the pasta. I let the sauce heat up for a few minutes, and then placed the 8 chicken breasts into the sauce.

For this part, don't worry too much if the chicken breasts are kind of on top of each other. It's not as important for them to have their own space since they are already fully cooked. Unfortunately I don't have any more pictures to show, but the next step is to add the grated mozzarella cheese on top of each breast, and leave them in the pan (covered) until the cheese melts. And then it's ready to serve! Enjoy =)

Recipes #4, #5: Blue Cheese Brussels Sprouts & Chicken Piccata

So the other night, Carlee and I decided to make dinner for my mom and sister. My mom LOVES brussels sprouts, as well as blue cheese (and so do I). I was super excited to learn how to make these wonderful vegetables! I have another brussels sprout recipe, which I'm sure I will be sharing soon enough....


Before I go into the brussels sprouts, I'll start with the chicken piccata. The recipe is from, surprise surprise, Giada de Laurentiis. It's very simple to make! I bought the Foster Farms skinless, boneless chicken breasts (comes with 4 in a pack), and de-fatted them. I'm not sure what the technical word for that is....but essentially, I told the knife, and cut off any white areas or red bloody areas. Luckily, these breasts didn't have much. Then, I pounded them out, and cut them all in half. I took a picture of the ready-to-be-coated cutlets, but it looked too gross, so I've decided to keep it to myself!


Next, put salt and pepper on them, and lightly coat them with flour. In a pan, put 2 Tbsp butter and 2 Tbsp olive oil. Once it starts to get hot, place the chicken in the pan, and cook for about 3 or 4 minutes on each side. The thinner you pound them, the quicker they cook!

Once they're done, put them on a plate, but don't dump out the extra butter and oil. In the pan, put about 1/3-1/2 cup of lemon juice (for me it was the juice from 2 lemons), 1/2-3/4 cup chicken broth, and 1/4 cup of capers (but I put in the entire jar). Let that come to a boil, and throw the chicken back in, and let it simmer for about 5 minutes. YUM.

There they are, ready to be served! If you make pasta, the extra sauce can be used for that =)

For the Blue Cheese Brussels Sprouts*, all you need is:

4-5 shallots
2 cloves of garlic
red pepper flakes
1 Tbsp olive oil
brussels sprouts (we used maybe 1 pound?)
salt and pepper to taste
blue cheese
*recipe is stolen from Carlee...thanks!

Start off by cutting the brussels sprouts in half, and place them in a pot of boiling water for a few minutes. Once they've had a chance to cook, drain them, and put them in an "ice bath" or you can just place them in the freezer (to stop them from cooking anymore!). In the meantime, heat up 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and place the sliced shallots in the pan. We cooked these for a long time...until they were nice 'n brown!! Oh, and don't forget to add in the red pepper flakes! yummm

Look at those yummy sprouts!

The shallots stayed in the pan for probably 15-20 minutes.
They got super tender and were sooo good!

After the shallots have been browned to perfection, toss in the brussels sprouts and the garlic. We cooked these for another 15 minutes, at least. Make sure the brussels sprouts get tender, but not too mushy! They should have a nice golden brown color to them when they are finished.

Here's a picture before they were completely done, but you get the idea!

Unfortunately I failed to get a picture of the final product. I think I was just too excited to dig in! The brussels sprouts were amazing, and I will definitely be making these again. Oh, so at the very end, we ended up serving ourselves a portion of the sprouts, and then added as much blue cheese as we wanted. It melted and was wonderful with the brussels sprouts!

Recipe #3: Halibut and Sauteed Spinach

Since Ryan and I are both trying out this weight watchers thing, we decided to test out a recipe that comes from the weight watchers book! There aren't very many recipes, but the halibut caught our attention! It seemed super easy to make (and it was!) and it was only 4 points per 4 oz. piece of halibut. I had been craving sauteed spinach (don't ask....I don't even know), so we found a recipe here, from foodnetwork.

Working on the spinach! Beware...it is really scary when you first put it in because the oil sprays on you!! Oh, but it was so worth it!

Sittin' in the oven, almost ready to come out! How pretty do those look?!

And yes, of course we had a bottle of Charles Shaw (aka 2 Buck Chuck) with our dinner! I don't mind if I do!

For the halibut: Preheat the oven to 350F. Spray a baking pan with cooking spray, and place the halibut on it. Then drizzle lemon juice (maybe 2 tsp per fillet) and brush on the olive oil (1 tsp per fillet). Put a thin layer of bread crumbs (1/2 tablespoon on each one) and put on the capers, salt and pepper. And that's it! Put it in the oven, and wait for 15-20 minutes!

And there you have it! It was such a quick meal to make, we were almost upset by how little effort and time it took (if that's possible)! And it definitely filled us up! So what was the total damage? Well, since our halibut pieces were 5 oz each, that part was 5 points. For the spinach, all of the points actually come from the olive oil, which is (gulp) 1 point per teaspoon. Geez. But it's okay, because I managed to make the spinach with 4 teaspoons, making it 2 points for each of us. Lastly, we had wine. Now, for the most part, wine is 2 pts per 4 oz. A bottle is about 25 oz, so that means there are 12 (ok, maybe like 12.5, but whatever) points per bottle. That give us 6 points each. So, the total comes to a mere 13 points!! Not bad for a filling meal, complete with a bottle of wine!

An Idea for All Those Leftovers!

This one is from Giada de Laurentiis. It's something I saw on her show a while ago, and I've been meaning to try it ever since. The day after Thanksgiving seemed like the perfect time, since it's Turkey and Cranberry raviolis!! I'm not really a huge fan of the Thanksgiving turkey, but figured I'd give this one a shot. If you're interested, you can find the recipe here.

Depending on how much you like cranberry sauce, I suggest putting more. I put in a little extra, but wish there had been a bit more. We used wonton wrappers, so they weren't as heavy as normal raviolis. A word of caution: be carful not to poke holes in them while boiling!! A couple of them split open, causing the water to become infested with turkey....kinda gross.

I didn't actually make the gravy in Giada's recipe, because my dad is pretty much the Gravy King. I went the easy route and used his leftovers from the day before (another way to save some time!!).

Overall, I did enjoy these. Definitely a unique way to enjoy all of those leftovers, instead of making sandwiches for the next few weeks. The only downside is that they take a while to make. It's a lot of hard work putting the turkey/cranberry mixture into each of the wonton wrappers!! However, it is something that can be done ahead of time. You can just put them in the fridge, and boil them whenever!! The last part is very fast...only takes about 3-5 minutes.

Sorry that I didn't take any pictures!! But honestly, they aren't the prettiest things ever....I was a little lazy when I was making them, because it was taking so long. OH! And she recommends using dark meat. My family only eats dark meat, so we had about 3/4 of a pound left, but had probably 5 or so pounds of white meat. I ended up mixing the two, which helped get rid of some of the unwanted white meat! Depending on your preferences, I'm sure either would taste great! Enjoy =)