Ratatouille

Raise your hand if you've ever watched the movie Ratatouille, and wondered what it was all about! Raise your other hand if you kept misspelling ratatouille while trying to write this blog post!

Sorry guys, I have no hands left to write this deal,  I'll have to use my elbows. Toes? Nose maybe? It's just sitting there taking up a whole lotta room on my face, being completely useless so... I guess it can get a job.

This is not going in the direction I expected..but when do these posts ever make any sense, ya know?

hashtag rambling.

Spaghetti Squash & Meatballs

As part of my beat the pots-cure the migraines-be healthy enough to move to another country diet, I am trying desperately to avoid sugar and condensed carbs. Meaning no bread, no white potatoes, no pasta's and sorry to say, no cookies. That said. I happen to have the worlds strongest craving situations that ever did exist. If I suddenly develop the urge to eat a chocolate chip cookie for example, no other food will satisfy me until I eat that chocolate chip cookie. Days and weeks can go by, and I will still want one and will have eaten everything else in the cupboards while trying to avoid the one thing I actually wanted. 

Solution: Eat a darn cookie. Usually for me it only takes a bite or two to realize I was fussing over nothing, and then I get over it.
I forgot where I was going with this....
I think what I was trying to say, is don't deprive yourself. Eat what your gonna eat, just do it wisely.

Like a pasta dinner. But lets go ahead and take out the pasta part of that pasta.

Dinner in a Pumpkin

It's almost the end of October all ready, how did that happen?!

We got our first real rain fall today, which makes it finally start to feel like fall around here.

I mean, us Californians; the first little sign of cold weather and we bring out our thickest sweaters, scarves and boots. It also must be noted that I ate soup for both lunch and dinner, and am currently drinking a large mug full of apple cider. Because I can.

Halloween is coming up this week, a holiday which I have never been the hugest fan of; but its starting to grow on me a little.

Every Halloween growing up, my mother always made the same thing for dinner on Halloween: Dinner in a pumpkin.

And every year, I had the same reaction: a turned up nose, and candy for dinner.

Last year, I made the infamous dinner in a pumpkin meal for the first time. I added my own ingredients, and changed the original recipe up a bit. Then I ate it. For maybe the first time ever.

Something must of worked for me, because I made it again this year. 

Heres the Recipe:

When serving (if in 1 large pumpkin) make sure to scrape out some of the pumpkin sides along with the filling! Also, I served over rice last year, to make it a little more exciting :)

This festive holiday meal was also served with fresh applesauce, 

in case you were wondering.

Along with dinner in a pumpkin, we would always have caramel apples for dessert while we watched whatever Halloween special was on TV (and by that I mean Casper the friendly ghost: the Hilary Duff edition) 

What are some of your holiday traditions?

 Enjoy!

and Happy Halloween!

Food Find Friday: Jovial Foods Gluten Free Pasta

So I have been sitting here staring at this screen for a good hour now trying to knock this post out.

I keep getting distracted by dilly-dalling, and cannot seem to focus on writing this post.

Also Blurred Lines is playing right now, and one cannot just sit still with that song busting out.

Not possible.

Part of my distraction is also that I have barely seen the glow of a computer for the last week, I mean I come back to cyber world and royal babies are being born, bachelorette mens tell all has already happened, and five million emails are sitting in my inbox.

Remind me to not go off the map again. 

Or remind me to do it again, I'm not quite sure yet.

Before all the craziness and visitors arrived last week, I had a mission to test and begin reviews for the eight hundred boxes of products I have received over the last couple weeks. I wanted everything to be done and gone in time for the festivities, if for any reason but to clear the boxes out of my hallway.

I mostly succeeded, at the very last minute. 

The fine folks at Jovial sent me a couple boxes of their gluten free pastas last week, and due to my ever expanding love of pasta; I couldn't wait to try them out.

Jovial is not a brand I see to frequently around these parts, especially not in the pasta section. I have seen a couple of their cookie products lining the shelves and assumed desserts where what they made. Boy was I surprised when I opened up a box of noodles!

And man was I even more surprised when I learned the majority of their products are pasta, or pasta related!

Jovial (which means happy, or cheerful. In case you where wondering.) has both wheat and gluten free products, all completely organic. In their gluten free corner, they have noodles, cookies, olive oil and canned tomatoes.

The noodles are all made in a dedicated allergen free facility (yay dedicated facilities!) and their cookies are made on sanitized equipment on designated days.

I can't wait to get my teeth into some of those cookies ;)

The first pasta I tried out was the tagliatelle. 

Tagliatelle if you don't know, is a traditional egg pasta. The ingredients are so incredibly simple with just brown rice flour and eggs listed. 

Because I had received two types of noodles, I wanted to try one cold and one warm.

The tagliatelle went for the cold.

I kept it simple by just adding lots of vegetables and a light roasted pepper sauce, and letting all the flavors meld together in the fridge for a couple hours.

This is really a catch all dish, no "recipe" needed (other then the red pepper sauce, click the link above for that) so you can throw in anything you want.

I added lightly steamed broccoli, red onions, bell peppers, spinach, and cherry tomatoes. 

It was yummeroo!

The noodles absorbed all of the flavors so wonderfully, just like real wheat noodles do. You may have noticed in your own endeavors that gluten free noodles tend to just get soggier in time, not more flavorful like glutenous noodles do.

But these Jovial noodles did not get all soggy and gross. Win!

Besides that, what do you really say about a noodle, ya know? It had good texture, and it took on flavors well. 'nough said.

 Next up was the spaghetti noodles.

I felt the only way to go with traditional spaghetti noodles, was to make a traditional spaghetti with meatballs. Right?

 For the spaghetti sauce in this dish, I roasted some tomatoes, garlic and bell peppers (roasted tomatoes forever!) in the oven to make the base of the sauce.

Have you ever roasted whole garlic bulbs? I do it all the time. Its delicious.

What you do, if you've never done it before; is cut off the top of a whole garlic bulb, and wrap the rest of it in foil. Bake for about a half an hour, or until the garlic has gotten all juicy and delicious.

Yum!

So after baking all that goodness up, you'll throw the tomatoes, peppers and garlic insides into a saucepan, along with a jar of tomato sauce. Add a little fresh basil and red wine vinegar, and call it a day!

Pre-made sauce made better.

Also, try not to forget you have meatballs in the oven during that whole time. They won't thank you for it later.

Now that you're digging into your spaghetti and meatballs, you'll notice how wonderful it tastes. Aside from the delicious sauce, or the too tough meatballs; there is a perfect noodle base. Firm noodles that hold their own against all of the other flavors and textures, and best of all don't shatter to a million pieces when you twirl your fork around them. All I want is to have a little Lady and the Tramp action going on when I eat spaghetti. 

Jovial succeeded in that.

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Crostini with Roasted Tomatoes and Garlic

I have developed a new addiction these days.

I also have several old addictions, and between the new and the old; I have created the most delicious snack on the planet.

Here it is, a marriage between my three favorite things: 

garlic (!!!), crostini (!!!) and roasted tomatoes (!!!).

The best part, it's super easy to make. 

So easy a caveman could do it, as they say.

You know how much I like easy.

How did this delicious masterpiece come to be, you might ask.

Well let me tell you:

I have been craving garlic bread for like, a month now. Between parties, and visitors and all sorts of stuff going on, I just haven't had the opportunity to eat some.

But as I was dreaming and salivating over the the very thought of that garlic-y, buttery, toasted goodness; a wonderful thought came to my mind.

A thought about bruschetta, which turned into an idea with roasted tomatoes.

And thus, the roasted tomato and garlic crostini was born.

*instead of slicing it lengthwise, like this^^^

you can slice the bread into circles, like so^^^

I say circles if you wanna get fancy, and boats if you just wanna stuff your face.

I obviously just wanted to stuff my face.

Enjoy!

Roasted Red Pepper Quinoa with Roasted Tomatoes

Quinoa guys.

I love it. Nobody else seems to.

Why?

I don't get it.

Because its bland, they say. There is no flavor to it, they tell me.

Do you eat pasta all by its lonesome? Couscous or Rice?

I don't think so.

If you need some convincing on quinoa. I have the dish for you.

Its full of flavor, so don't even say its not.

Why is this quinoa so full of flavor.

(I keep feeling the urge to say "flavor-town" name where thats from!)

Roasted red stuff. Thats why.

Its so simple to make this quinoa dish, and its sauce.

Its super saucy.

Here are the secret ingredients:

Thing 1, 

Thing 2.

Know what they are? Can you tell from these awful, low lit photos?

Roasted red peppers, and roasted cherry tomatoes.

Roasted tomatoes with garlic are my new best friends.

I may be eating some right now. You will never know.

Roasted red pepper sauce is also my new friend.

The wonderful Ari at the Diva-Dish made this sauce for a pasta dish a few weeks ago, and I knew I had to make it in some form or another.

You know how much I love me some pesto, in any flavor or form.

This is basically the same recipe as regular pesto, but made with roasted red peppers instead of a basil.

Here's the recipe guys:

To roast the tomatoes:

 Halve 1 cup of cherry tomatoes, and add 2 cloves garlic minced. Toss with olive oil until coated.

Cook on a baking sheet, in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

To the roast the Red Peppers:

Either cook on baking sheet in 400degree oven about 30 minutes (until soft and charred)

or

Roast over stovetop flame, turning over until each side is charred and softened.

Place in a ziplock bag, while warm, and let it sweat for about fifteen minutes.

for further, step by step direction go to the diva-dish: here.

Enjoy!

Quinoa Ribboned Asparagus Salad with a side of Salmon

I love asparagus. It is one of my top three vegetable choices (what are the other two, you ask? I'm not really sure as of this moment..but I didn't want asparagus to get an ego about being labeled my fave) I love chomping on those little stalks freshly roasted with salt and lemon. Plus they make me feel fancy, and thats important.

A couple months ago, a certain member of my familia (who's identity shall remain a secret) had some blood work done. One of the tests, was an asparagine level. It was low. Me being all jokey and brilliant, told said person these levels were low because they didn't eat enough asparagus. Asparagine/Asparagus, sounds only right. Said person laughed off my comment as ridiculous and set out for a doctor visit. After said persons said doctor visit, I asked how it went.

Said persons response: "I need to eat more asparagus."

This pleased me to no end...I was right, and I get to cook more asparagus.

Just call me Dr. Bean.

So for dinner the other night, I had to fill a weekly asparagus quota, as well create a new, healthy and fresh meal.

Challenge accepted.

I have seen a few different salads floating around with ribboned asparagus. Some have quinoa, some lemon vinaigrette. Mine has all of that bizzness.

What those other cyber people did not say however, is how difficult it is to ribbon asparagus. I mean, they are super thin, and incredibly fragile. Eventually, I got it all worked out, but phew was it tough.

I mixed it up with some fresh red lettuce leaves, tossed in some quinoa and added a little avocado.

I than moved on to creating a salad dressing. Let me tell you, salad dressing making, is not one of my strong suits. Every time I see something that claims salad dressing to be the easiest thing on the planet, I want to slap them in the face. I'm just to advanced for trivial things like vinaigrettes I guess.

Anyway, the dressing I ended up with was quite yummy. It just took forever to get the ingredient portions down.

After all that was done and mixed up, I tested it out. Raw asparagus=super bitter.

So I added some mandarins to the mix, and a little more sweetness to the dressing to even it out.

Mission accomplished.

I also made some Salmon. I did it the Pioneer Women way. The super easy and delicious way as it could be called. Here it is.

I should say, I didn't actually use her recipe: I just cooked it her way: by putting salmon in cold oven and turning it to 400degrees for 25 minutes. All I put on the salmon was a little evoo, salt and pepper and a hint of garlic. 'Cause what would life be without garlic?

Once it was cooked, and ready to eat; I added some lemon-butter to the fish. Taste-ee

Here are the recipes for the salad and vinaigrette:

I also roasted some asparagus. To do that, I just laid asparagus flat on a cookie sheet and drizzled with evoo, salt, garlic powder, and a squeeze of lemon juice. I put in in a 400degree oven and cook for about 10 minutes. Until its soft, but not too flimsy.

Enjoy!