Weekend Update

This blog is called Single Serving partially because I cook for one person….most of the time.  I love cooking for others and have been waiting a long time to have people (outside my immediate family) to cook for.    I’m beyond happy to have Dave and the kids as my guinea pigs – which sounds weird to say because they actually have a guinea pig but there you go.

On Friday – I cooked nothing. :)

Lunch was work related.  We dined at the Capital Grille.  My friend Christina and I shared the lobster & crab cake appetizer.

  I also had the the sirloin steak salad. For dinner Dave and I went to Casa Bella.   We started with bruschetta. And split the fresh mozzarella salad with sundried tomato and roasted red pepper.  I LOVE when restaurants send out individual plates when you split an appetizer. I had the Pappardelle a la Vodka.   I think pappardelle is my favorite kind of pasta. Dave had gnocchi.  Dave is a gnocchi expert.  Dave loved this gnocchi more than he loves me.

OK.  Maybe not.  But he really really liked it. He had ricotta cheesecake for dessert.  I promised to make this for him soon.  It was light and slightly lemony.  I am not a cheesecake fan but it was delicious. I had old faithful – chocolate ice cream. Needless to say we kind of forgot to eat light Friday night. Saturday morning Dave made me a delicious breakfast,  An egg sandwich w/turkey bacon on a biscuit with a side of grapes.  We ate our leftovers from dinner for lunch. Then I took over the kitchen.  Dave always likes the kids to have a homemade dinner but he’s rushing around the weeks he has them.  I made a bunch of freezer friendly things so he just has to heat them up.  First - I made Chicken Parmesan. With fresh tomato basil sauce. Topped with pepperoni.   I can’t wait for the feedback on this one. My nook helped me to find a mac and cheese recipe. (I didn’t wind up using this one actually)   I used extra sharp cheddar and swiss for the mac and cheese. There are now 4 trays in the freezer.Next up…meatballs.  Unfortunately – the messy nature of meatballs kept me from taking many pictures. Note to readers:  This wine sucks for drinking but is OK for cooking.  My apologies to anyone I gave this to for Christmas.  That means – Dave. :)   Trust me.  They were in this pot and now are in 4 freezer bags. Another project for this weekend – creating a pantry.  Dave put some wire shelves in a closet near the kitchen.  .I’ll show you the results once there’s actually stuff in there.  Right now it’s pretty bare bones.Here’s what was in the cabinets which I cleared out and put down new (green) shelf paper.  Someone I know likes green a lot. Before…After…   Finally I made a delicious pasta dish.  I roasted some tomatoes (on a cookie sheet, drizzled with olive oil, S&P, and cloves of garlic - 250 for about 2.5 hours). I used some shrimp. Spinach, lemon and cannellini beans.Penne.  All in the pot.  Basically I sautéed shallots and garlic in olive oil, added the shrimp, beans (rinsed and drained), cooked pasta, spinach, the juice and zest of 1 lemon, a sprinkle of salt and about 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper.  Once the spinach is wilted – it’s done.  It’s a combo of a recipe for a salad of shrimp and cannellini beans from Food and Wine, some Smitten Kitchen tomatoes, and a pasta dish I saw by ELR on Tasty Kitchen. All in the dish.

I should say something witty or wise but I’m getting sleepy.  It’s this weather I’ll tell you.  I just want to hibernate.