Simple Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes, Basil, and Parmesan Cheese Recipe

This was a simple pasta dish I made for lunch the other day with some of the Pasta Gravy I got from my April Hatchery Box! I wouldn't call the Pasta Gravy anything super special, but it was very spicy! If you like spicy things, especially sauces it might be for you. But you can always use a regular marinara sauce. I just served the pasta and sauce with some fresh chopped basil, tomato slices, and Parmesan cheese. This dish is very quick and easy to make, but it looks so colorful and fun for the Summer or anytime of year.

Mango, Quinoa, and Black Bean Salad Recipe

This is a very easy and healthy salad to make. I only recently started eating quinoa, but I've had very interesting and delicious recipes made with it. You can even use it to make a breakfast egg casserole! You can cook quinoa a few different ways, in a pot, or I've been using my rice cooker lately. Either way you do it, treat it a little like pasta and add salt to the water it's cooking in.

BBQ Mayo French Fry Sauce Recipe

I just got some of these frozen fries from Costco, they're the Alexis Sea Salt French Fries, and I've been having them as a snack a few days this week. These frozen fries are actually really good, and they get really crispy even from the oven. Of course, me being me, I had to make a sauce for them, so here's the recipe from my creation! It involves some mayo and BBQ sauce, and like usual, a few other strange ingredients so like I always say, feel free to substitute ingredients! I don't think I've ever recreated a recipe without substituting something, and sometimes your innovation can make your dish even better!

I find that mayonnaise makes the best base for most french fry sauces, and it's something I always have on hand. We use the one made with Olive Oil, but you can use any kind you'd like.

Avocado Toast Recipe

I saw a photo of Avocado Toast on Instagram a few weeks back, and was craving it so much I finally bought the ingredients to make some myself! This is one of my new favorite snacks, (or meals!) now and so easy to change up and make in just a few minutes. It's great when you're starving and don't want to take a lot of time to make a meal.

Hashbrowns with Eggs, Cheese, Avocado, Sour Cream, and Salsa Recipe

I make this dish every so often, when I want a great breakfast dish, but doesn't require a lot of work or time. It's fairly hands-off when it comes to the effort put into this dish, but is a great payoff in how delicious it is!

Quinoa Salad with Asparagus, Feta Cheese, and Olives

I made this quick and easy Quinoa Salad for dinner last night, and it turned out very delicious! I don't think I've ever had quinoa before or cooked with it, so it was a bit of an experiment. I modified the recipe quite a bit, as I always seem to do, so the recipe below is my altered version, with the link being the actual recipe I semi-followed. You can kind of treat this salad like a Greek salad as well, and add any other ingredients you might put in a Greek salad, such as cucumbers, kalamata olives, or even some red onion might be good.

Piccino Restaurant Review

This is a special restaurant review because it's for one of my all time, (if not my absolute) favorite restaurants in San Francisco. I recommend anyone visit it because they are a very seasonal restaurant, using produce that's in season, and they change the menu everyday. I'm including in this post all of the photos, so far, of the food I've had.

I think one of the great things about Piccino is that if you don't have reservations, they usually have a seat at their counter bar seats, which are right in front of the kitchen, so you can watch them making your food. I find the counter seats are usually where I want to be sitting. They have regular tables, but I find them to be a little too dark at night for photos!

Another great thing is that they have a smaller cafe, where you can order coffee, or pizzas and sandwiches to go. It's right next to the main restaurant, so you can pop in there to grab lunch to go. I want to mention that unless you're getting a dinner second course dish, most of these are too small on their own, and you'll want to get a few menu items to share. Even if you get pizza, get about one for each person unless you're getting a bunch of other menu items. We usually just go through the menu that day and pick 3-4 menu items we want and share everything. They're very good about bringing extra clean  plates for each course.

Salads:

Pear, Pecan, and Blue Cheese Salad

Nectarine Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

I randomly threw together this salad, and it turned out to not only be beautiful to photograph, but also delicious and refreshing as well. It was just some romaine lettuce, chopped cucumber, celery, diced nectarine, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, and poppy seed dressing. I used some pre-made dressing, but have also had this salad with homemade dressing. Homemade is good, but hard to get that same taste in the dressing as store-bought. You could go either way.

Frozen Sweet Potato Fries with Spicy Fry Sauce

I may not have mentioned this before, but I really love dips and sauces. I love making them, I love eating them, and I love swirling my food around in them. Wait, what? Anyways, I especially love dips for my fries. I've recently acquired a love for sweet potato fries, used to hate them, but now I love them. Funny how that works. So, I got some of these frozen ones because lets' face it, fries take too much time and effort to make from scratch. Screw that. These are the Alexia brand, which if you've had any of their products, you know you're in for a treat. They were delicious, you pop them in the oven, stir half way through the cooking time, and they come out crispy and crunchy just like sweet potato fries are meant to be.

Of course I had to make a sauce for these wonderful fries. Something spicy is what always comes to mind when it comes to making fry sauces at home. One of my favorites is just ketchup with some sriracha, but I wanted to up the ante on these. So I mixed, are you ready for it?, equal parts ketchup and mayonnaise, along with a little sriracha and chipotle chile powder which we had in the spice drawer. To be more exact, it was 2 Tbsp ketchup and 2 Tbsp mayonnaise, 1/2 - 1 Tbsp sriracha, and 1/2 tsp of the chile powder. Top it off with a sprinkling of some Kosher salt. That's it! This sauce would be great with regular fries also.

Artichoke Dip

We had a big Costco bag of seasoned waffle fries in the freezer and since there's nothing I love more than a good dip or sauce, I wanted to make a really good one for these waffle fries. I don't really remember exactly what I threw into the food processor, but here's a rough idea:

Drained can of artichoke hearts, along with some cream cheese, parsley, garlic, lemon juice, dash of Sriracha for heat, salt and pepper.

My 2nd SactoMoFo

You may remember a past post about Sacto MoFo explaining that it's a food truck get-together in Downtown Sacramento that they put on during the summer. Well, I went to a second one, and finally got to bring B. We tried some delicious food and here is what we tried. We tried foods from Volkswaffle, Red Truck, Star Ginger, and Chairman Bao.

First, was a waffle from Volkswaffle. We got strawberries and whipped cream on ours, and it was a delicious sweet treat to start off our food truck testing.

More Homemade Pizza

Went over to a friends house, and we wanted to cook something together. Pizza seemed like a good option, since I've been making so much of it recently. It turned out really great because her oven seemed to get extra hot. Almost burned it, but pulled it out of the oven just in time. It was absolutely delicious! Just used some store bought pizza dough, covered with some jarred tomato sauce, added some spices like oregano and some salt, tossed on some store bought roasted garlic (I know, this was news to me that you can find roasted garlic in a store, and it was amazing. Perfect for pizza), fresh mozzarella cheese slices, some fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil.

We cooked it for 8-12 minutes in a 500 degree oven. If your oven gets super hot like this one did, make sure to check on it every few minutes. Slice up and enjoy!

Almost Famous Garden Salad

One of my favorite salads to make, it's a copycat recipe of Olive Garden's Garden Salad. You can add pretty much any veggies you want, but I'll post here the original recipe. It's great with these baby peppers we usually have in the fridge, and pepperoncini's are also good in the salad. The dressing is easy to make, you can just mix all the ingredients in a blender.

Guacamole!

Guacamole is one of my go-to favorite easy snacks to make. If I don't want to cook something, and we happen to have avocados and tortilla chips laying around, odds are we have the rest of the ingredients! Super easy the way I make it, and very tasty! Sometimes I mix it up and make some pico de gallo to add to the mashed avocados, other times I take the simple route (which is my go-to recipe) and just use some pre-made salsa, and jarred jalapeño slices.

Pasta with Tomato Sauce and Basil

I decided to make a simple pasta dish for dinner, and I used up this interesting pasta shape we had around the house. All I did was cook the pasta in boiling water, heat up some pasta sauce in a pan with some olive oil, and diced tomatoes. Then added the drained, cooked pasta to the sauce. Mixed with some grated Parmesan cheese, and topped with some chopped fresh basil from the garden! Easy, simple and delicious!

Cornmeal Pancakes with Mixed Berry Syrup

I really like cooking breakfast foods. They're easy, simple, delicious, and we always seem to have the ingredients laying around to make something tasty. In this case, it was Cornmeal Pancakes with Mixed Berry Syrup. The original recipe calls for blackberries, but we didn't have any fresh berries, but we always have a giant bag of frozen mixed berries. And we had just bought a bag of cornmeal, so it was a great opportunity to try out this recipe. It turned out delicious, and the pancake was crunchy, mixed with the berries, and I also added butter and maple syrup to it. 

Father's Day Dinner: Steak, Fries and Veggie Salad

My dad is a classic steak and potatoes kind of guy, so for Father's Day, I already knew what his answer would be to "What do you want for dinner?" So I set out to do a variation on this theme, which included fries! The steak was marinaded in a mixture of chipotle peppers and cocoa powder (yes, you read that right, cocoa powder).

The veggie salad was a combination of tomatoes, peppers (sort of like bell peppers, but we had these tiny ones in various colors that are also sweet), cucumber, red onion, fresh dill, fresh parsley, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

The sauce I served with the fries was called "Fry Sauce" and is just equal parts mayonnaise and ketchup, with a little Sriracha thrown in for fun.

Homemade Pizza - 3 Ways

An easy thing to make for dinner is homemade pizza. It cooks quickly, you don't have to have a ton of ingredients, and you can buy pizza dough at the store. It's also an easy way to get rid of some pantry jars of stuff to put on your pizza, such as olives, artichoke hearts, anchovies!?, pizza sauce/tomato sauce, whatever you want.

A local grocery store, carries frozen and fresh pizza dough, so we occasionally grab one, freeze it, and then defrost it the day before I want to make it. At first, I was trying to top the dough on a cookie sheet, and then trying to move it over to a pizza stone preheating in the oven. It's impossible. You can flour it, put olive oil on it, but it doesn't matter. It always seems to be too heavy to move easily without just stretching out the dough. So I've learned to just get over it, and cook it on the cookie sheet. I cook these at 500 degrees, for 10-15 minutes.

This was before it went in the oven. Here are the ingredients in order I added them: olive oil, tomato sauce, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, salt, parmesan cheese, fresh mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, and half artichoke hearts. 

As you can see, the basil got kind of fried, so I recommend adding it in the last few minutes of cooking time, or just adding it after it comes out of the oven. This first style was very good, simple and classic.

Here's my 2nd way, ingredients were: olive oil, half pizza sauce, half garlic ranch sauce (bought from the store), red pepper flakes, dried oregano, parmesan, red onions, fresh mozzarella cheese, half artichoke hearts and fresh basil. As you can see, this is right around when our basil plant started dying, so there weren't many leaves to pick for this pizza.

For the 3rd way, I decided to split the dough into 2 pizzas. This one was, olive oil, pizza sauce, red pepper flakes, dried oregano, parmesan cheese, monterey jack cheese, red onions, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese.

The 2nd half of the dough was all the same, just the garlic ranch sauce instead of pizza sauce. 

I really liked the ones with the garlic ranch sauce. I found it with the pizza dough and the store had some fresh packages of pizza ingredients, like pepperoni, pizza sauce, and the ranch sauce. I highly recommend trying to make pizza at home. It's so easy, and it turns out delicious!

Spinach-Pita Salad

This salad doesn't really have instructions, it's just a very simple recipe. I did use naan bread instead of pita, because I like it more, but use whatever you want.

Here's the recipe adapted from Food Network Magazine

Soak 1/4 sliced red onion in cold water, 10 minutes; drain. Mix 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon chopped dill, and salt and pepper. Brush 2 pitas with some of the seasoned oil, then toss 2 cups cherry tomatoes in the rest. Cook the pitas in a grill pan until marked, then tear into pieces. Grill the tomatoes until marked. Toss the pita and tomatoes with 6 cups baby spinach, 1/4 sliced cucumber, 1/4 cup kalamata olives, the onion, 2 tablespoons olive oil, the juice of 1 lemon, 1/4 cup chopped dill, and salt and pepper.

Grapefruit, Olive, Onion, and Basil Salad

The first part of this story starts with me having a grapefruit addiction...I eat them almost everyday lately. My mom buys me a big Costco bag of them, and I go through it in about 2 weeks. I just cut one in half, sprinkle a bunch of salt all over it, and then go to town cutting out each wedge, and digging them out with a spoon. Then, once all the slices are gone, I'll sprinkle more salt into the juice left at the bottom, and scoop that out as well. 

The second part of this story, is the time when I saw this recipe on Food Network, with Giada making this weird salad, consisting of grapefruits, red onion, basil, oil and balsamic vinegar and black olives...yes, olives. I was kind of weirded out by it, but figured the olives added a nice amount of saltiness to the dish that it needed. Giada was right, this salad is delicious. I had two helpings. 

If you're one of those people who eats a grapefruit with sugar, stop what you're doing and start using salt, and then make this salad. I think people who like sugar on their grapefruit are weird. You should just get over the fact that you have no taste and knowledge of how sourness and saltiness are a match made in heaven. I'm sort of embarrassed to say that I'll stand over the sink eating a lemon sprinkled with salt sometimes. Back to the salad...go make it before grapefruit season is gone!

Here's the recipe adapted from Giada

Ingredients: 

• 2 grapefruits, trimmed of skin and cut into large slices
• 1/2 red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup pitted chopped black olives (we didn't have any so I used these fancy Sicilian green olives we had. Even Kalamata olives would be great. Use what you have)
• 1 bunch basil, leaves thinly sliced (about 1 cup) (I didn't have any fresh basil, so I used basil from a tube and mixed it in with the dressing. Do what you have to do)
• 3 tablespoons aged balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 
  
• Directions:
• 1. Place the grapefruit slices in a slightly overlapping pattern on a serving platter. Sprinkle the onion slices over the grapefruit. Then sprinkle the olives. Top with the basil. Drizzle the balsamic vinegar and olive oil over the salad. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve.