Gorgonzola Pear Pasta

I'm currently dying.  Well, okay, not dying, but very, very uncomfortable - right now, I'm sick, with a cough so bad that it makes me feel like my ribs are breaking with each fit.  But I still have to eat, right (and um, Mark does, too)? Luckily, I found this quick and delicious dish from allrecipes. And man, talk about easy - I'm not sure you can get much easier than this.  This vegetarian dish is worth putting in your weekday dinner line-up.  

Click below to get the recipe!

Pasta Bolognese

After two nights of quick and easy meals, I woke up yesterday to an incredibly frigid morning with only one thought sounding through my head.  Bolognese.  Bolognese is a thick, full-bodied meat sauce originating in northern Italy's Bologna.  I've made countless Bolognese recipes, some incredible and some so-so, but this recipe from Emeril, which I've adapted just slightly, is one of my favorites.  I'll warn you now: the list of ingredients for this recipe is relatively extensive, and it takes about 2 hours of simmering (I had a lot of work to do tonight, and Mark wasn't going to be home until very late, so it worked out for me - you may need to wait until the weekend).  But the complexity, richness, and depth of flavor of the resulting sauce is well worth it.   

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Chicken Piccata

I was...sort of limited with the ingredients at my house, given I bought the very last package of chicken available at Soviet Safeway.  It was this:

I decided to try to make chicken piccata, throwing together all of the appropriate dried herbs that I had in my pantry.  All told, the meal worked out incredibly well.

Click below for the recipe!

Creamy leeks with pasta

I had a lot of chores to take care of this evening, so I needed a quick and filling dinner, one that would use up the leeks I bought on a whim a couple of days ago.  Instead of looking up a recipe like I usually would, I decided to wing it using the ingredients I already had in my fridge.  This is what I came up with:

And it was pretty delicious.

Click below for the recipe!

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Garlic Basil Oil

Last night, I was simultaneously 1) craving pasta and 2) trying to figure out how to use up the three tomatoes that have been sitting in my veggie crisper for the last week.  Fortunately, steamykitchen.com had the solution:  Pasta with fresh tomato sauce and garlic basil oil!  I've actually been eying this recipe for a couple of weeks, as it is seemed simple enough to prepare (and cheap!), yet still managed to be a step above your typical tomato sauce.  As an added bonus, it provides me with an elegant pasta dish I can serve to my vegetarian friends.

Click below for the recipe!