We made food: baked penne

Today's dinner was a team effort: my husband is a sucker for baked pasta, so he suggested what to make and even helped cook it! What a good boy.

Here he is giving his seal of approval to the finished product:

And here are the beautiful cheesy insides:

Oh yeah. This was very easy to make, just needs a number of ingredients and some time.

I made the tomato sauce by first sauteeing half an onion and some garlic in olive oil. Then I added a large can of tomatoes, a can of tomato paste, some dried basil and oregano (I just eyeballed the amounts) and salt and pepper. I let that simmer while I boiled a pound of  whole wheat penne until it was almost fully cooked.

Meanwhile, Hubby was mixing 15 oz. of ricotta with a chopped head of broccoli, an egg, some grated parmesan, and salt and pepper. When everything was ready, he greased a large Pyrex dish and added the sauce, pasta and ricotta mix in layers, starting with sauce. He topped everything off with some mozzarella. It went into the oven for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

So, so good and filling, and it's gonna last us for a few days!

Edit: my husband just calculated that this cost us only $1.61 per serving!

I made food: Meatballs and tomato sauce

The other day I made one of my favorite foods, thanks to my sister providing me with her recipe...

(Sorry about the random objects in the background--I haven't really gotten my photography space set up yet. I do have a real camera finally though! With a macro setting and everything! It's a hand-me-down from my dad.)

Turns out meatballs and tomato sauce are incredibly easy to make (not to mention DELICIOUS), and one recipe makes a whole ton of sauce. I hope my sister won't mind if I reproduce her recipe here; it's pretty loose, so you can change it up however you like. (Her notes say "all quantities guesstimated", so really just experiment until you hit on your favorite concoction.)

Ingredients for the meatballs:
1-2 lbs. ground meat of whatever kind(s) you want (I used 1.5 lbs. of beef and got 14 medium-size meatballs)
1 egg
1/2 tbsp. each dried basil and oregano
chili powder to taste, if you want
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper
2 tbsp. grated parmesan (I omitted this because my husband keeps kosher)
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup flour

Ingredients for the sauce:
about 1 cup each of celery, onions, and carrots, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 cup red wine
1 box (32 oz.) beef stock
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste
3 tomatoes, diced (or you can use a large can of tomatoes, like I did)
a bay leaf

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Combine all the meatball ingredients in a bowl (use your hands! It's like delicious-smelling Play Doh), then form into balls. In a cast iron skillet or Dutch oven, heat some olive oil on medium heat, and brown the meatballs on all sides (this prevents them from falling apart, as I discovered...). Remove the meatballs and set them aside, and add a little more olive oil. Saute the veggies and garlic until softened.

Put the meatballs back in the skillet, add the wine and increase the heat to high. Let the alcohol boil off for a minute or so. Add the beef stock, tomatoes, tomato paste and bay leaf. Bring everything to a boil and stir to break up the tomato paste, then cover the skillet and put it in the oven for 90 minutes. (I actually left the lid of my Dutch oven slightly ajar to encourage the sauce to reduce.)

If you want the sauce to be smooth, you can take the meatballs out and blend the sauce--I used the immersion blender we got for our wedding. (Just don't blend the bay leaf!) But I've also left the sauce chunky, and that's fine too. Add salt and pepper to taste, and you're done! All you need is some pasta...

Seriously guys, this stuff is so good. Not overly sweet like some tomato sauces, lots of good vegetable flavor, and really moist meatballs!

I'm finally back! (plus a recipe)

Hey there, readers! Did you forget about me? It took us a few weeks, but we've pretty much completed our move to the Boston area, and today we finished unpacking the office so I have my computer back!

It's been a pretty big adjustment moving from a small college town to a huge metropolitan area, but our new apartment is pretty nice and the doggie has a backyard to play in. Oh, and can I just say that Boston traffic is THE WORST. Absolutely nuts. I keep getting honked at because apparently in Boston you're not supposed to wait for a gap in traffic before turning...you're just supposed to GO!

But enough complaining! I had to cut my nails down to stubs since so many of them broke during the move, but I'd like to get polishing again soon! All I wore for the past two weeks was Julep Oxygen Nail Treatment, and I must say it held up pretty well to all the beating it got! Oh, and also in nail news, I got a Helmer at Ikea!

Here's my nail setup. My polish collection occupies five of the drawers in the Helmer, although with a lot of extra room in each drawer for more. Sadly, my lightbox was a victim of the move, so I'll have to make a new one, but that's no problem since we're swimming in cardboard boxes!

Finally, I'll leave you with a good pasta recipe I made up tonight. I didn't manage to take a picture, so you'll just have to imagine...

I cooked some whole wheat penne and set it aside. In a pan I put a healthy amount of olive oil and sauteed some minced garlic; after a minute I added some cherry tomatoes and frozen kale. Once the tomatoes started bursting open I turned off the heat and added salt and pepper, lemon juice and fresh basil. The result tasted really fresh and summery, and had beautiful, vibrant red and green colors!

We're trying to cut costs when it comes to groceries, so it'll be interesting trying to come up with new recipes I can make on a budget!

OK, I'll be making sure to blog regularly again--I've had a language-related post planned for a while now, so I'll try to get that up tomorrow. And if anyone has any suggestions for fun stuff to do in Boston or good restaurants to try, let me know!

I made food: crack and cheese

Heh, two days after I talked about eating healthy I'm posting this. Yesterday I made a batch of Martha Stewart's "perfect macaroni and cheese" for my department's grad student picnic. Luckily I ended up with some leftovers, because this is seriously the greatest mac and cheese ever. I've made it around ten times and it always vanishes within two days.

You can find the recipe at this New York Times blog post. You'll notice first of all that this recipe contains over a pound and a half of cheese and a whole stick of butter, but who's counting? But this stuff is not just a cheese bomb: it also has nutmeg and cayenne pepper, which give it a bit of a bite and a more complex flavor. Not to mention that crunchy top of homemade bread crumbs!

It's pretty easy to make, just time consuming. To make the cheese sauce, you first have to make a white sauce by whisking butter, flour and milk for what seems like a million years. Not to mention shredding all that cheese (because you wouldn't buy pre-shredded cheese for this masterpiece, would you??).

I'm lucky my fiance is coming to visit so he can finish the rest of this stuff, otherwise I might overdo it!