Linguine with Mussels and Sausage

I had never had a mussel until this weekend, and now, I cannot believe that I have been missing out on these morsels of oceanic heaven for 22 years! They are so good!

This pasta dish kind of came together on the fly for a small gathering of friends, but it is easily one of the best dinners that I have ever had. It was super easy to put together and took only about 30 minutes to cook!

What you'll need: (serves 5-6 guests)

• 2 lbs of Mussels
• 1 lb of Hot Italian Sausage
• 1 lb Linguine
  
• 6-7 Plum Roma Tomatoes
• 5-6 Cloves of Garlic
  
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• White Wine
• Garlic Powder
• Oregano
• Italian Seasoning
• Salt & Pepper
  

Recipe:

1. Clean you mussels. Grit in a mussel or clam can turn a delicious meal around, so you want to clean you mollusks well! Place mussels in an ice bath for 30 minutes. Since the mussels are alive, they will filter the clean, cold water through their internal system, thus cleaning themselves.
   
2. Remove beards from mussels and scrub thoroughly.
3. Keep cleaned mussel in ice bath.
4. Place a pot of salted water on stove to boil for pasta.
   
5. In a deep skillet with a lid, or a pot, heat up some olive oil over medium heat.
6. Add Italian sausages in their casings to pot and cook.
7. Remove from pot and cut up into slices.
8. Dice up the plum Roma tomatoes and place in pot with some olive oil and white wine
9. Mince garlic cloves and add to pot.
10. Add oregano, Italian seasoning, and salt and pepper.
    
11. Return sliced sausage to pot and let simmer and reduce.
    
12. Place pasta into water pot (should have come to a boil) and cook for approx. 10 minutes
13. Mussels do not take very long to cook, about 4-5 minutes, so when the pasta only has 4 minutes or so left, add mussels to sauce with a splash of white wine.
14. Strain pasta and add to sausage and mussels - mix together with tongs.
15. Discard any unopened mussels.
16. Serve family style in a large bowl - enjoy!
    

Never Underestimate the Greens...

I'll have you know that I thoroughly enjoy eating a "bloody as hell" (ahhh pulp fiction) steak smothered in french fried onions, mushrooms and gravy, but every now and again, I get a hankering, a downright desire and need, for a crisp and delicious green salad.

Salad has gotten a bad rep over the years, I think generally because most often at restaurants, it is served cheaply as a side dish and often features tasteless, white iceberg lettuce and a general scarcity of other vegetables. This image is no doubt familiar, but it's time to change all that - it's time to bring the green salad into the foreground and out of its current, dingy side dish dwelling.

I don't care how you slice it - iceberg lettuce is crunchy water, and if I wanted that, I would just pulverize some ice cubes and make a mixed drink...There are sooooo many types of delicious lettuces out there! Go and meet them at your local grocer and see what appeals to you tastes!

Personally, I love a good spring mix with baby spinach, arugula, and a butterhead lettuce, such as Bibb or Boston. My husband, on the other hand, likes a crunchier mouth feel and loves Romaine lettuce. Thus, we usual have a hearty mix of lettuces in our salads.

I heard once (I can't for the life of me remember where....maybe my mom? Maybe Rachel Ray...besides the point) that a good salad should have 5 elements - your lettuce(s) and then 4 other ingredients.

The salad featured in the photo above features:

• Lettuce(s)
• Cucumber
• Hard-boiled egg
• Cubed chicken breast, cooked in olive oil with garlic and Italian seasonings
• Carrots
• Gouda cheese

This salad was divine, and was easily as delicious as a slab of steak...and also, waaaay healthier. Other great salad ingredients could be:

• Avacado
• Nuts
• Sunflower Seeds
• Apple
• Pear
• Crab or Lobster
• Fish
• Steak
• Craisins
• Tomato
• Mandarin Orange
• Blueberries
  
• Grapes
• Cheese

The most important thing about creating a satisfying salad is to make it your own and be creative! Don't just grab a bag of iceberg lettuce and continue the terrible slog which has become the side salad, but instead, grab the green reins and design something delicious, and nutritious!

Mamma Mia! It's a Homemade Pizza!

Okay, so who are we kidding? Which one of you couldn't murder an entire large pizza all by yourself after a long day of work? Pizza is an amazing gift from God, one in which I indulge in perhaps far too often...

Several months ago, we bought a pizza stone and have been making our own homemade pizzas instead of ordering out. Homemade pizza tastes INFINITELY better because you can cater your pie to your own particular tastes and likes and also, you never have to skimp on da good stuff...

Our most recent pizza making adventure featured an absolutely divine Hawaiian pizza and also a savory veggie and pepperoni invention. Both were affordable to make and also gave us leftovers for lunch the following day!

What you'll need:

• A pizza stone (You can grab one at Target for under $15.00!)
  
• A pizza peel is awesome to have, but you can also use a large cutting board.
  

Hawaiian Pizza

• 3-4 slices of Canadian bacon
• Corn meal
  
• Small container of pineapple
• Small jar of pizza sauce
• 1 lb of pizza dough (we get ours at a local bakery so it is nice and fresh)
• Garlic powder
• Mozzarella cheese (Sargento pre-shredded 2 cup bag)
  
• Pizza Cheese Blend (Sargento pre-shredded 2 cup bag)

Pepperoni & Veggie Pizza

• 1 lb of pizza dough
• Corn meal
• Small jar of pizza sauce
  
• 1/4 lb sandwich-size pepperoni
• Sliced baby portabella mushrooms
• half an onion, sliced/chopped
• A bell pepper
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Pizza Cheese Blend
• Chopped garlic

Recipe:

1. Set oven to preheat at 475 degrees.
2. Place pizza stone in the oven - It is VERY important that the stone heat up with the oven! - If the stone is cold when the pizza goes onto it, the bottom crust will stick and make the pizza nearly impossible to remove - trust me - I've done it...
   
3. Place a generous amount of corn meal onto either your cutting board or pizza peel - the corn meal acts like flourm creating barrier so that the dough does not stick to the wooden surface.
4. Stretch out you dough - I like to hold the dough from my fingers and mostly let gravity do the work of expanding the size by moving the dough around slowly in circles.
5. Pace dough on peel.
6. Coat edges of dough with olive oil.
7. Place pizza sauce onto the dough, leaving a 1/2 inch border for crust.
   

• Hawaiian Pizza

1. Cube Canadian bacon.
2. Cube pineapple.
3. Place a generous layer of mozzarella cheese over the sauce.
4. Add pineapple and Canadian bacon
5. Add anther generous layer of the pizza cheese blend.
6. Sprinkle top with garlic powder.
7. Carefully shimmy pizza off peel onto the pizza stone - as long as you used a good amount of corn meal, you should have no problem with the shimmy move...
8. Cook until crust is golden brown - 15-20 mins
   

• Pepperoni & Veggie Pizza

1. Cut onion into thin circles.
2. Cut Pepper into strips.
3. Place a generous layer of pizza cheese blend onto sauce.
4. Place pepperoni onto the pizza.
5. Add a generous layer of mozzarella cheese onto pepperoni.
   
6. Place onion, baby portabella mushrooms, and pepper onto pizza as desired.
7. Place chopped garlic generously onto top of pizza.
8. Carefully shimmy pizza off peel onto the pizza stone - as long as you used a good amount of corn meal, you should have no problem with the shimmy move...
9. Cook until crust is golden brown - 15-20 mins
   

Tikka Masala Stirfry

I'm a huge junkie for Indian food, and every couple of months, I get the crazed feeling and absolutely MUST make something with some Indian flavors. Last night for dinner, my Indian itch was scratched when I made a delicious tikka masala stirfry with chicken, onion, yam, bean sprouts, baby corn and water chestnuts. This is a pretty quick meal to get together and makes hungry tummies very happy!

This recipe will serve 4-5 people
Prep Time - 10 mins
Cook Time - 30 mins

You'll Need:

• 2 lbs of chicken (can be breast or thigh meat, whichever you prefer)
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 onion (vidalia)
  
• 1 can of coconut milk
• coconut or olive oil
• 1 tikka masala simmer sauce (Sharwoods is a great brand)
• 1 can of mixed Asian stir fry, drained (water chestnuts, beanprouts, bamboo shoots, baby corn, etc)
• 2 cups of jasmine or basmati rice
• 4 cups of water
  

Spices that can add oodles of flavor:

• curry
  
• tumeric
  
• garam masala
• garlic
  
• cardamom
  
• coriander
• ginger
• cayenne pepper
• salt
• pepper

Recipe:

1. Get your chicken cleaned of any fat and cut into bite-size cubes.
   
2. Place chicken into a large skillet or wok with a hearty tablespoon of coconut oil or olive oil and set to a medium heat- a wok is ideal because it guarantees that your simmering stir fry will have plenty of room to build up and you wont have to worry about it boiling over into a sticky mess onto your cook top.
3. Add salt, pepper, garlic powder, and curry powder to the chicken.
   
4. Begin rice - Put 4 cups of water into a medium size pot with 1 tablespoon of butter and bring to a boil - add rice and turn down to a low simmer until rice is cooked - about 25 minutes.
5. Chop onion while chicken cooks.
6. Once the chicken is cooked, add onions.
7. Chop the sweet potato into relatively small pieces and add it to the skillet
8. Open up your jar of tikka masala and coconut milk - add both to skillet and mix.
9. I personally like my food very spicy, so here is where the oodles of spices above come into play...
10. TO TASTE: add ginger, garam masala, curry, tumeric, coriander, cardamom, garlic, cayenne, salt and pepper - be sensible - ginger, coriander, and cardamom are very pronounced flavors so you don't need a lot of them!
11. Bring the heat of the skillet up to medium high. Stir occasionally.
12. Add Asian veggies.
13. Serve stir fry over rice and enjoy!
    

Chicken Soup with Rabe, Tomato, and White Beans

So, this weekend, I roasted a chicken. I love roasting a whole chicken, and usually do it is once or twice a month, especially during the cold weather months...The great thing about roasting a chicken is that it not only gives you tons of succulent meaty morsels and an excuse to drown a plate of rich food in homemade gravy, but it also gives you loads of opportunity to create delicious soups!

I went to the market tonight with the hubby and with no real plan, we ended up grabbing some

• rabe
• 2 cans of canellini beans
• 1 large can of diced tomatoes

which all turned out to be phenomenal ingredients for a really tasty and light soup. I also grabbed an extra can of chicken stock, just in case the soup needed extra fluid.

Stock: (Made the night prior)

• Prep time - 5 mins
• Simmer time - 1 - 3 hours
  

1. Place chicken carcass and drippings from bake pan into a large pot.
2. Fill nearly to the top of the carcass with water.
3. Add a half an onion, a carrot, and one sprig of celery.
4. Cover top of water with a sprinkling of basil, oregano, rosemary, garlic powder, salt and pepper.
5. Simmer for 1 - 3 hours and taste for flavor.
6. Let cool and then strain out bones and vegetables.
   

Soup:

• Prep time - 10 mins
• Cook time - 20 mins

1. Turn stove on to medium high to high heat.
   
2. Add the diced tomatoes to the chicken stock.
3. Clean the rabe (I just used a single bunch from the market - a comfortable hand grip full) and chop rustically into chunky, bite size pieces.
4. Place rabe into stock and bring to a boil.
5. Here I added some extra chicken broth (only one can, and not at all necessary if your soup has a good ratio)
   
6. Add beans at boil and turn pot to simmer.
7. Serve with fresh grated parmesan cheese and enjoy!