Creamy Bacon Carbanara

I haven't done a recipe in a while, so I thought I'd do one.  This is Ryan's new favorite meal.  We both really like fettuccine alfredo, but for some reason it just never turns out like I want it to.  Like every 3rd or 4th try it's really good, and every other time it's lumpy and weird.  This on the other hand is perfect every time.  It is delicious and so easy!  I can usually make it in like 15-20 minutes if I have everything together and the kids don't start screaming.  It looks and tastes way fancier than it should for how easy it is.  I've had a few people ask for this recipe so I'm just going to post it on here for them to find, and for anyone else that wants to try out a new easy dinner recipe.

Creamy Bacon Carbanara

Sauce
2 eggs
¼ cup Milk or Heavy Cream
⅓ cup Parmesan
Fresh diced Parsley or dried flakes
¼ tsp. Salt

⅓ lb. bacon, fried crisp
½ lb. chicken, cut up and sauteed
½ lb. Pasta

Start out by putting a large pot of water to boil for the pasta.  I like to use linguine, but you can use pretty much whatever you want.  Now, on to the bacon...I like to chop up the bacon before cooking.  It's easier to cook, and then you don't have to chop it up after.  Set the bacon aside and keep the grease in the pan.

Chop up the chicken, and then fry up in the bacon grease with salt and pepper.  When it's done, set it aside with the bacon.

Mix all the ingredients for the sauce.  I usually just do it in a measuring cup like this.  I like it best when we have heavy cream, but I use regular milk in this all the time, and it turns out just fine.  I actually add a little more heavy cream when I use that, because I like it to be saucy.  I stick with the 1/4 cup, when I use regular milk.

Once the pasta is all done, strain and put back in the pan.  You can set aside some of the boiling pasta water to use to temper the egg sauce, but I usually don't worry about it and it turns out fine.  Add the sauce to the pasta while it's still hot, stirring vigorously while you add it so that the mixture doesn't stay in one place for too long so the eggs don't cook.  If you're worried about raw eggs, you can turn the burner on and cook on low heat for a bit.  Since the pasta is hot when I add the eggs, I usually don't worry about it, but I'm just kinda lazy.

Once that's all done add the bacon and chicken.  You can also add some sauteed onions or mushrooms, but Ryan likes it best when it's simple.

Now just serve it up and eat.  You can sprinkle some extra Parmesan cheese on top.  We like to have a nice cesar salad and some garlic bread with this.  I hope you guys like it.

Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries

Strawberry shortcake is my all time favorite spring/summer dessert.  It's quick and easy and delicious.  But you can really only bring strawberry shortcake to a dinner party so many times before they start to think that's the only thing you know how to make.  My parent's have a lemon tree in their backyard, it's like the most amazing thing in the world to be able to go out and pick lemons for free.  I stocked up on lemons when I went to visit last week so I decided I wanted to make something with lemons for dessert.  I had seen a few things on Pinterest lately and decided to mesh a bunch of them together.  It was pretty darn good if I do say so myself.  I LOVE lemon so of course it was a winner to me, but the people we had dinner with loved it and even Lucas and the other kid went back for seconds.  So here you go,  Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries!

Lemon Cheesecake with Strawberries

Crust:
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 tablespoon ground cinnamon
9 graham crackers
1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted

Cheesecake:
16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 eggs
2 lemons, zested and juiced
1/2 cup sugar

Lemon Curd:
1 lemon, zested and juiced
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 egg


Directions: 
Crust: Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease the bottom of a 9 by 9-inch baking pan. In a food processor, process the sugar, cinnamon and graham crackers until you have the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add the melted butter and pulse a couple of times to fully incorporate. Pour into the baking pan and firmly pat down with the bottom of a glass. Bake for about 8-10 minutes, or until set.

Cheesecake: Add cream cheese, eggs, lemon zest (try to make as fine as possible), lemon juice, and sugar to the food processor and pulse until well combined. It should have a smooth consistency. Pour onto the cooked graham cracker base.  Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes, or until the center only slightly jiggles. Remove from the oven and cool completely before Refrigerating for at least 3 hours.

Lemon Curd:  This is just the recipe for lemon curd that I used, but you could use any lemon curd recipe. Add zest and sugar to a food processor and pulse until the zest is very finely minced into the sugar. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and beat in the sugar and lemon mixture. Add the egg, and then add the lemon juice (about 2 -3 tablespoons). Mix until combined. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened (about 10 minutes), stirring constantly. The lemon curd will thicken at about 170 degrees F, or just below simmer. Remove from the heat and cool.

When the cheesecake is set and the lemon curd is cooled, pour the lemon curd over the top of the cheesecake.  Serve with sliced strawberries on top.  You can add a little sugar to the berries to sweeten them.  You could use any type of berries on top of this.  I might try raspberries or blueberries next time.

Potato Soup and Chicken Pot Pie

I have a really yummy recipe for potato soup. It's pretty basic, easy to make, and delicious.  It's a family recipe that I've tweaked over the years.  I also use almost the same recipe to make chicken pot pie and homemade chicken pot pie is fantastic.  It's been pretty cold recently so we've been making lots of soups and comfort foods.  I'll start with the soup recipe and then show you how to tweak it for chicken pot pie.

Potato Soup
2 medium sized potatoes
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic minced
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup flour
1 cup half and half
1 chicken bouillon cube or equivalent
salt and pepper to taste

Dice the potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion and put in a pot with garlic and just enough water to cover.  Ryan and I are not huge onion and garlic people so there's not that much in here, sometimes I even leave the garlic out.  If you do like a lot of onion and garlic you could double those quantities.  Add salt, bring to boil and let it sit until veggies are tender, about 8 minutes.

While the veggies are cooking, in a separate pan melt butter, add the flour when the butter has melted.  Mix the flour and butter together and let them cook together for a while over medium heat.  Don't let it burn.  Add the bouillon or better then bouillon, whatever you prefer to use.  I use chicken because that's what I have, but you could use vegetable if you wanted.  It just gives the soup a bit of extra flavor.  Add the  half and half , you could also use just plain milk, I've done this before when I don't have half and half, just use a little less so the soup is still thick. Let the mixture heat up until it becomes very thick.

Then just add the cream mixture to the veggies when they are done cooking.

Mix thoroughly over medium heat until the soup looks like potato soup.  If it's a little runny you can try to let it cook for a bit longer to thicken up, it will also thicken up a bit if you let it sit on the counter before serving.  If the soup is too thick just add more milk or  half and half.  Also, be sure to taste it and add salt and pepper.  I think I added 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of salt, just to give you an idea.

Serve while the soup is still warm.  Sprinkle some grated cheese on top.  We like to eat this with some french bread or garlic bread.  It also goes well in bread bowls.

This doesn't make a ton of soup, just barely enough for me and Ryan for dinner, and then usually a bit of leftovers for lunch the next day.  You could definitely double or triple the recipe for larger groups, I just made a smaller recipe for me cause we don't need that much for our small family.

Now, for the chicken pot pie recipe.  It's basically the same but you add grilled chicken.  And I usually add less liquid so it's not so soupy.  What I do is make everything the same, and then I use a slotted spoon to add the veggies and then add however much of the liquid I want until it's just right.  The other difference is that you make pie crust to put it in.  Use your favorite flaky pie crust recipe and make enough to line the pan and cover the top.  If you use the soup recipe above, this will give you enough for an 8 inch pie.  I usually cut that in half and put it in this smaller baking dish we have.  Again, this is usually enough for just us, and maybe some leftovers for lunch the next day.  Here's the bottom crust.

I fry up some chicken tenders in butter and salt and pepper.

Then I just add it to the soup mixture, and pour it into my crust.  Make sure to taste the mixture with the chicken before you add more salt.  The chicken and crust are a little salty so I don't usually add any extra salt when I'm making chicken pot pie like I do when I'm making soup.

Put the top crust on and pinch the edges together.  Bake in a 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.  We're really just cooking the crust here, everything else has already been cooked.  You can let it set up a bit before serving or you can just serve right away which is usually what we do cause we're too hungry to wait.

Sausage Bolognese

For those of you who read my sister's blog, this will be a repeat for you, but she introduced me to this amazing  recipe and it is so good I just had to pass it on.  It takes about 30-45 minutes to make, but you just throw everything into a pot and let it simmer so I call that easy.  Seriously, give it a try, you will be hooked!

Sausage Bolognese 

Ingredients 
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound of ground sausage
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 onion, peeled and chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
2 garlic cloves
6-8 mushrooms, chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups beef broth
1/3 cup cream cheese
1 pound rigatoni pasta
1/4 cup Parmesan

Directions
Put chopped up carrots, onion, bell pepper, and garlic in a food processor. Pulse the vegetables until finely chopped but still chunky. Add olive oil to a large, heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the sausage until browned. Add the chopped vegetables, cook until tender, about 6 minutes. Add the chopped mushrooms, and tomato paste and continue cooking, stirring to dissolve the tomato paste, until the mushrooms are softened. Add the beef broth. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low, and let the mixture simmer until the liquid is reduced by half, about 10 minutes. Add cream cheese and stir just until the cheese is incorporated. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil over high heat. Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain pasta and add to the bolonase mixture. Toss with Parmesan and serve.

Goofball and Lunch

Lucas has been doing some really silly things lately.  I don't know how kids figure out that they can fit their legs into their shirts.

Or that fruit snacks fit in their ears.

 Lucas fell asleep like this on the couch the other day.  I scooted him to a safer position as soon as I got a picture.

 I made some roasted potato and leek soup the other day.  It was really tasty and really easy.  I used this recipe except I didn't put in the arugula.  Look how pretty the potatoes and leeks are ready to be roasted.

 My mom and Becky came over and we made panini to go with the soup.

 And we watched Pride and Prejudice.  I love eating yummy food and watching a good chick flick.

Cake Bites

Look what my mother-in-law gave me!

There are so many amazing recipes in there.  Cakes bites are really good, and they are actually pretty easy too.  Dipping them is the hard part, and that's probably because I'm really bad at it.  I want to try these rosemary lavender ones just because they look beautiful, although I'm sure mine wouldn't actually look that good.

I made these raspberry cheesecake ones this weekend.  They are delicious!

A few of the recipes from the cook book are online here if you want to try them.  Or you can come visit me and I'll make you some.  :)

Fruit!!

I love fruit.  It is so yummy, healthy, and pretty.  The other day I made some fruit pizza, and it was delicious.  The only problem with fruit pizza is you want to get a variety of fruit to go on the pizza, but then you only use a bit of each so there's leftover fruit.  I'm really bad about using up fruit before it goes bad so I've been thinking up a lot of ways to eat all the fruit this time around.

I had this bowl of fruit with my lunch the other day.  It was very tasty, and since I felt so healthy eating the fruit, I didn't mind having some ice cream for dessert.

We had french toast for dinner last week, and I served a bowl of fruit with that as well.  And now on to the real reason for the post (since I'm sure you guys have seen a bowl of fruit before), I made mini fruit pizzas.  Just like a regular fruit pizza, but miniature.  Aren't they adorable?

Peanut Butter and Butterfinger Cookies

I brought some brownies and cookies for everyone to snack on while they watched Ryan defend his thesis.  I made peanut butter and butterfinger cookies.  They are so good!  Just use your favorite peanut butter cookie recipe and add chopped up butterfingers.

Enjoy!

Brazilian Feijoada

We had a "Brazil Night" a couple weeks ago with a bunch of families in our ward that have ties to Brazil. Most of them had served missions in Brazil, although one family is actually from Brazil. Everyone brought Brazilian food to share, and there was a lot of guarana. I've had it before but I got re-addicted, it is so good. One of the dishes that someone brought was Feijoada. It was seriously amazing! And Lucas loved it too which is a plus. Anyway, I got the recipe and I made it for dinner. It was actually pretty easy and it was just as good as ever. You just put everything in a crock pot and let it stew. Within 2 hours of starting it, the whole house smelled heavenly. I would definitely recommend trying this dinner. The recipe has been Americanized a little bit. Brazilian's would use different meats and cuts and stuff, but this is still really good.

Brazilian Feijoada

1 lb of Sausage (The Hillshire Farm big long kind)

1 lb of Beef Short Ribs (3-4)

1 bag of Black Beans

1 Onion, chopped

3 T Garlic, minced

4 cups of beef broth

1 lb of Bacon

salt and pepper to taste

Throw cut up sausage, beef short ribs, blacks beans (I soaked mine for like 5 minutes before to clean them), onion, garlic, and salt and pepper into crock pot. Add beef broth and just enough water to cover everything. Cook on low for 6 hours. About 30 minutes before it's done, fry up the bacon until it's crispy. Break it up into pieces and add to the crock pot. This is actually the recipe doubled, but I just don't see any point in trying to keep half a thing of uncooked meat for a week, instead of just reheating the leftovers. But you can decide what's easiest for you.

So yummy!!!

Thai Chicken Wraps

I wanted to do something special for dinner last week, so I went to my favorite food blog and found something yummy and light for summer. These Thai chicken wraps were just calling my name. Also it was an excuse to use fun attachments for my immersion blender.

I made some rice and lentil pilaf to go with it. Maybe not exactly a Thai dish, but I love lentils. I just chop up some veggies and then boil them with the lentils in chicken broth until tender. So easy.

Look how pretty and colorful everything is.

The peanut sauce was amazing. I kinda just wanted to eat it with a spoon. Next time I make this, though, I will use just a bit less red curry paste. It wasn't even that difficult to make - definitely worth trying!

Lemon Sorbet

When my mom came out to Utah this week, she brought a ton of lemons and oranges. Lemons are possibly my most favorite fruit. I love all citrus including oranges and grapefruits, and I can eat a lemon without squinting. I have this huge bucket of lemons on my counter right now and just looking at it makes me happy.

I've used up a lot of the oranges making orange juice, as I said in my previous post. The other night, though, I felt like using my lemons and making some sorbet. I decided to throw some orange in there too, since the last time I made lemon sorbet it was a bit too tart for anyone but me.

Citrus Sorbet

• 3/4 Cup Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
• 1 1/4 Cup Fresh Squeezed Lemon Juice
• 3 Cups Water
• 3 Cups Sugar
• A Pinch Each of Lemon and Orange Zest (finely chopped)

Heat water and sugar in a sauce pan until sugar dissolves to make a simple syrup. Let the simple syrup cool in the fridge. Juice lemons and oranges and add to simple syrup. Add zest. Pour into ice cream maker and let freeze for 30 minutes or so. I usually transfer to a freezer safe container after it's done in the ice cream maker and let it set up even more for a while before eating. This is seriously so flavorful and amazing!

I may have eaten 3 of these today...

I found a new cinnamon roll recipe that is amazing. It's actually more a way to twist the rolls than anything else. You could do this with any recipe.

I like this twisting method way better, because they look awesome, and there is less dough in the center so the rolls cook more evenly. I like soft centers, but not mushy uncooked centers. The Simply So Good blog always has amazing recipes.

Even though I think Lucas has been in the terrible twos for a while, now that he is actually two I have something to blame it on. He unzipped the couch cushions today and made a little nest for himself out of the stuffing. I wish I had gotten a picture. He also thinks that hand lotion is hair gel, and he loves to spike his hair. It drives me crazy.

But doesn't he look like such a stud in his new birthday clothes?

Warm Weather Food

Since it's warming up outside I decided to break out the ice cream maker. I decided to make some berry frozen yogurt. I've tried to make raspberry sorbet before but the sifter I have wasn't a fine enough mesh to get the seeds so it just didn't turn out very good. Then I found a fine mesh sieve at the store and I was instantly in love. It worked perfectly.

I got some corn on the cob to go with our summery meal.

Lucas was a huge fan.

And this doesn't have to do with food, but Lucas has been a huge daddy's boy lately. He ran and hopped into bed to cuddle with dad the other morning and I just had to get a picture. So cute!

Shrimp and Salad

Ryan went out of town for a few days so I broke out the shrimp for dinner. Actually, I've been cheating lately and I've just been making shrimp for lunch, so Ryan doesn't have to see it and I can eat it anytime. And Lucas loves it. Success! But anyway, since Ryan was out of town I had shrimp for lunch and dinner. I made some shrimp alfredo with asparagus for dinner. Yummy! Asparagus is another thing Ryan won't eat.

And then for lunch I had salad. This salad recipe started out as an apple and pear salad that my family has all the time. We've been making it for years. After eating a salad at Rumbi's once and trying to copy it, it turned into Mango Chicken salad, and I make that sometimes still too. But my absolute favorite is the next version of the salad that my sisters and I created with shrimp. We used to call it Sister Salad but then someone pointed out that it sounded to Relief Society-y, so now we have to come up with a new name. Seriously, this salad is amazing and I would have it every day if I could. I know I've posted about it before, but I don't think I posted the recipe so here you go.
Salad

1-1 1/2 heads of Lettuce (I use red leaf or green leaf)

1 Mango, chopped

1 Red Pepper, chopped

Crumbled Feta Cheese

Shrimp - You can also use teriyaki chicken, this is how I made the Rumbi's salad version

Dressing

The dressing is the key. I LOVE this dressing. I used to be very picky about dressings and this was pretty much the only salad I would eat. Now I'm not as picky, but I still love it.

2/3 C Olive oil (I use light or regular - I think virgin is too strong)

1/3 C Lemon juice

1/4 C Sugar

3/4 t Salt

1 t Poppy Seeds

The last time I made the dressing I added a bit of lemon zest too, it was delicious. I'm kinda a lemon freak, though, so if you're making it for the first time you should probably leave it out.

And if you want to try original apple and pear salad, here's the ingredients for the salad part, the dressing is exactly the same.

Apple and Pear Salad

1 - 1 1/2 heads of Lettuce

1 Apples, diced

1 Pears, diced

1/4 C Dried Cranberries

1/4 C Toasted Pecans

1/2 C grated Swiss Cheese