Jul 30, 2010 Posted by Jennifer on Jul 30, 2010 in Dinner Idea, farmer's market, pasta, vegetables | 4 comments

My best ever pasta sauce

My twin sister always makes fun of me because I make pasta so much. But with so many different ways to make it, you can never get tired of it.

When I had my first apartment, I think I made pasta at least 4 nights a week! Here are some of my favorites I’ve made: Lasagna for One, Pasta Bake, Very veggie pasta sauce, Pasta with mini meatballs, just to name a few.

I almost always just make my sauce since its so much cheaper than buying jarred sauce. I do like to throw in some veggies into the mix. For this version I threw in 2 Melrose Peppers I bought at the farmers market last weekend.

I haven’t had Melrose Peppers before, they look like this:

I asked the man working the table if they were spicy or not, and he said no, more like a green pepper than a hot pepper. So I bought a small basket.

This version of my pasta sauce

1 28 oz. can crushed tomatoes
2 Melrose peppers, seeds removed
1/2 white onion
2 medium fresh tomatoes – threw the whole thing, seeds and all in!
4 cloves of garlic
2 links of mild Italian sausage, casing removed
1 teaspoon fennel, chopped
1-2 tsp. dried oregano
salt and pepper
1/4 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

In a medium skillet, cook the Italian sausage and drain any fat off. Meanwhile, in a blender, add the crushed tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, melrose peppers, onion and garlic and puree until smooth. Add that to the cooked Italian sausage, and then add the rest of the spices. Cook for about 20 minutes. Then I added the fresh parmesan cheese and let that melt into the sauce.

I also used a different shape pasta which was Campanelle or little bell shaped pasta.

I have to say it was REALLY hard to just have one serving, but I was happy I did, since I had leftovers to take to work with me the next day.

How often do you cook pasta??

Also, have you tried Melrose Peppers before??

Jul 20, 2010 Posted by Jennifer on Jul 20, 2010 in Dinner Idea, farmer's market, general ideas, pasta, vegetables | 3 comments

Guest Post – Slow Food Pasta Sauce in 15 minutes!

I am a member of Slow Food, which tries to bring people back to the table with the freshest foods, cooking with real ingredients, the more it comes from the earth, the better! Recently I joined that Group on Linked-In and a fellow member Meredith Greene posted a great recipe using her bumper crop of fresh tomatoes she grew in her back yard. It’s a great idea in general, but especially when you have so many tomatoes you don’t know what to do with them.

With her permission, this is her recipe for Slow Food 15 minute pasta sauce, which is so easy anyone can make this!

We’ve been harvesting scores of tomatoes each day from our twelve ‘bushes’ in our backyard organic garden. This morning I got up early and tried out a cooking method for tomato ‘sauce’ that I found online: 15 minutes of cook-time.

It sounded too good to be true, but I thoroughly loathe standing for hours (literally) by my stove stirring and wasting so much heat energy making sauce the old fashioned way.

The new method was fairly straightforward:

Pre-heat oven to 465 degrees F; cut the fresh tomatoes in 1/3″-1/2″ slices and lay them in a single layer on two large cookie sheets (cooking two sheets at once saves energy and makes enough sauce for two meals for four folks, or one dinner for a table of 6.) Roughly chop or slice 1 large yellow onion and scatter it in between the tomatoes slices; peel 8 garlic cloves and also stick them in among the tomatoes slices; drizzle EVOO liberally over, sprinkle salt and pepper to taste. Put both sheet in oven on different levels and bake for 15 minutes (even better results if on convection mode). I also saw another variation for putting in some fresh red bell pepper among the onions but I have not tried this, yet.

Remove sheets from oven; let cool slightly; tomatoes will look juicy, broken down and the onions a bit caramelized. Using your blender in turns, pour in tomato mixture about 2/3 of the way, pour in about 1/4-1/2 cup red wine (we used Twin Fin Cabernet Sauvignon–an inexpensive California wine with a deep, almost chocolaty flavor that pairs remarkably well with pasta).

Blend to desired consistency (less for a more lumpy sauce) and add salt, more EVOO or seasoning as you wish (we used a few sprigs of fresh rosemary) and a few green olives. Pour into a resealable container; it can be eaten right away but it is best if left in the refrigerator to ‘season’ for a few hours. We served with a simple green salad and a bit of grated Pecorino.

The best part: due to the limited cooking time, the tomatoes still retained that fresh-from-the vine unique quality. This method yielded the freshest, most flavorful pasta sauce I’ve ever tasted, without exception.

Thanks Meredith for letting me share this with my readers!
Does anyone have a lot of tomatoes growing in their gardens yet?? If so, what do you do/make with all of them?

Also, a fellow blogger John, who has lost 100 pounds since January, is going to try to participate in 40 events by his 40th birthday! Stride Gum is having a contest and if you vote for John, he could win $10,000.00!!! The voting starts today, so please vote daily until August 9th!! Click HERE to vote!

*****

And thanks so much for everyone’s support and suggestions for me giving up diet soda! I’ve survived 24 hours so far! And, I did P90X last night for 50 minutes! (the first disc) Wahoo!!

Oct 24, 2009 Posted by Jennifer on Oct 24, 2009 in farmer's market, Food Finds, News, recipe make over, vegetables | 5 comments

And the winner is…..

Okay, I had 14 comments on getting a free coupon for Silk Soy Milk and so I asked my 3 kids to each pick a number.

The winners are:

Duo Dishes

Sophia of Burp and Slurp

Cassie from Foodie with a Little Thyme

Please e-mail me at slim-shoppin@comcast.net with your mailing address and I will get that in the mail ASAP!

*********

While reading this months Women’s Health magazine, there was an article talking about how to change up what veggies you eat, and one of them was…

Parsnips!! Did you know that parsnips have 7 grams of fiber per cup? They also have a lot of Vitamin C and folate PLUS 40% of Vitamin K which is a hard to get nutrient that researchers believe can improve bone health and control blood sugar.

A recipe they suggested was making parsnip cakes.

Ingredients:

1 pound peeled and grated parsnips
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3 eggs
1/4 fat free milk
Season to taste with pepper, salt and nutmeg

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients and spoon each pancake onto a skillet lightly coated with vegetable oil. Brown on both sides.

Another suggestion for adding parsnips into your diet is to use them like carrots, such as in stir fry’s or in salads.

Have you tried parsnips before??

Check out Christina’s blog and wish her a Happy Birthday, PLUS she has a great give-a-way!!!

Sep 29, 2009 Posted by Jennifer on Sep 29, 2009 in dessert, farmer's market, Food Finds, fruit, general ideas, News | 6 comments

Prickly pears? + Winner of POM Tea!

Congrats to Errign who wins a coupon for a free POM tea drink!!

Thanks to everyone who left a comment!

Errign, I will contact you to get your address.

Do you know what this is? Neither did I. When I was grocery shopping over the weekend, there was a big pile of prickly pear fruits and I had never seen them before in my life! I asked the produce person (who looked like he was about 16) what they were. He showed me the ones that were ripe, he said just peel it and you can eat the whole inside, seeds and all!

So I brought some home and I peeled it, cut them into slices and my kids and I tried them. They taste wonderful! Not too sweet, but very flavorful. It kind of reminded me of pomegranates.

So, of course, I had to do research on it since I didn’t know what it was. It comes from the prickly pear cactus plant which looks like this:

Apparently the prickly pear cactus has been a staple of the Mexican and Central American diet for thousands of years. In the US it has been gaining popularity as an exotic, gourmet and HEALTHY addition to one’s diet. Now I was definitely interested in the healthy part. The Aztecs and Incas revere the cactus pear as a medicinal fruit.

These are all the health benefits:

Known to reduce cholesterol
Helps reduce gastrointestinal problems
Helps with digestion
Fiber Rich
Safe for diabetics – low glycemic food
Contain 8 out of nine essential amino acids
High in Omega 3′s and 6′s

1 cup of prickly pear fruit is only 61 calories and 5 grams of fiber!!

After reading even more about the pear, it turns out you can eat the the cactus part as well. That part (or pad of the cactus) is called the Nopal is treated like a vegetable. The inside of the prickly pear (called tuna) is treated like a fruit.

Most prickly pears at the store have had the prickly part removed, so you can handle them with your hands.

Boiled nopals are used in making salsa, you can add them to soup or a salad or omelet. You can grill it and coat it with salt and pepper and a little olive oil. They are ready when they are browned and soft.

The inside fruit can be eaten as is. You CAN eat the seeds, but don’t chew the seeds, (it doesn’t taste good if you chew the seeds) you can swallow them whole. You can also make prickly pear jam, jelly, or sorbet!

For further reading, check out these links:

www.nopaltrade.com

Nutrition Data

Desert USA

Also check out recipes for this fantastic fruit at Cooks.com

Has anyone else tried this fruit before??

Aug 1, 2009 Posted by Jennifer on Aug 1, 2009 in Dinner Idea, farmer's market, Food Finds, News | 17 comments

I had a bad day yesterday!

I’m normally a super positive person, and can roll with pretty much any punch that’s thrown my way. But yesterday was bad…

Friday started out great, it was gorgeous outside, I only had to work 4 hours. After work I was going to take the kids to my sister-in-law’s pool. I left my office, walked to my car, got in, and pulled out of the space. I thought I looked to see if there was a car behind me, but as soon as I pulled out, another car coming down the street smashed into my car!

I was so shocked by the whole thing! I wasn’t hurt, but my car was, the new tire I just bought a few weeks ago was completely off the wheel and flattened. My front bumper was on the ground….UGH!!!

Now a few weeks ago, a friend of mine at work was selling a car he didn’t want anymore, and I ended up buying it. We only had the one car (which I just wrecked) and even though my husband and I both work within walking distance to our jobs, I thought it is nice to have 2 cars to fall back on…

So, had I not jumped on the chance to buy my friends car, I wouldn’t have a car right now, so that’s a good thing, right?

So, we didn’t go to the pool. I had to call my insurance company, call for a tow truck, and figure out what to do. After that, the kids and I were straightening up, I had just finished vacuuming when guess what? The power went out in my house! I was like “what now?” I ran down to the fuse box, none of the fuses were out. My son ran next door and the whole block was down. Com-Ed said it would be up in about 3-4 hours!!

So, instead of ordering pizza in, we went out for pizza and by the time we got home, all was good!

So today when I woke up, I decided I was going to ride my bike for exercise. I had some books to return to the library, I used my daughters backpack, and rode for about 50 minutes around my neighborhood, and ended up at a place that would make me happy…The Farmer’s Market!!. It was super busy, but I loved walking around and seeing everything..

Some pictures of that:

Pretty flowers

Beautiful heirloom tomatoes

Gorgeous carrots

I love the color of these onions!

As I was riding my bike home with some great stuff I got at the farmer’s market, I noticed a sign on a storefront that said “Chicken and Waffles…Coming Fall 2009″
What? I’ve seen that combo on Diners, Drive in and Dives on the Food TV, but never thought there would be a restaurant like this in my neighborhood. I may just have to do a restaurant review when it opens!!

So, my car is totaled, the repairs are more than the car is worth, so we’re back to one car. So, I thought to myself, I think I’ll ride my bike to work!! Today is a new day, right??