Tortellini Spinach Bake

I came about this recipe for tortellini spinach bake in a creamy lemon sauce on pinterest some time ago and finally got around to making it this weekend.

The changes I made were inconsequential: no bacon, frozen spinach, and tri-color tortellini instead of spinach.

The sauce was cooking while the tortellini boiled. 

In goes the mozzarella and Parmesan cheese!  There was a small (ok maybe medium to large) splatter of cheese and sauce across the stove at this point.  I got a bit frazzled at things being ready on time.

Cheese gets mixed into the sauce AND sprinkled on the top. Glorious!

I wanted to have a million servings of this cheesy wonder, but it's pretty heavy so pace yourself.

I hope you like my latest decision to make the photos larger than life.

Birthday Cake Ice Cream!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOhhhh lawd this ice cream was such an exciting creation.

I followed this crazy easy recipe from cookies and cups, just heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk. How much easier does that get?  What makes it even better is that it doesn't require and ice cream maker.

There's your 2 ingredients for the ice cream base.  All you need next are some add-ins of your choice.

For my add-ins I took some cake I had laying around in the freezer and some left-over frosting that was in the refrigerator.

Cake crumbling is not a neat task!

About six hours later and you've got some crazy delicious ice cream awaiting you.

BBQ Pizza

Some of you might remember when I rocked your world with buffalo chicken macaroni and cheese pizza.  Now I attempted to blow your mind again with this pizza.

I present to you bbq pulled pork pizza!

I lined the pizza with bbq sauce, topped that with pulled pork shreds, and topped it all off with some Monterey jack cheese with jalapenos.

I stretched the dough all by myself! I could not have been more proud of myself.

Yeaaaa that's a good lookin' slice isn't it?

I made some coleslaw with Greek yogurt, lemon zest, and mustard and I LOVED it!  The recipe was from Homemade, a cookbook I got as a thank you gift from work.  This knocked the pants off of oil and vinegar coleslaw ladies and gents.

I was reallll disappointed that I didn't have any leftovers for lunch the next day.

Peanut Butter Honey Muffins

Ok, let's just get something straight right off the bat.  These were not good.  They tasted quite heavily of baking powder.  As I was mixing the batter, I thought to myself this is a shit ton of baking powder...,  but sadly I dutifully followed the recipe.

For your entertainment though, I took a ton of amazing photographs of these not very tasty muffins. Enjoy the food porn!

Ingredients line up.  Check out those adorable cupcake liners I got.

I was given these super-cute measuring spoons from Anthropologie as a thank you from work. I was very excited to scoop mounds of baking powder into these muffins.

The lighting is gorgeous, the liner is pretty, the muffins tasted icky.

Ooooo my artsy muffin pictures came out way better than they tasted.

Note: I have checked the blog I got this recipe from here and somehow that has the proper proportions of baking powder as opposed to the page I had starred on my Google Reader.  That being said these will probably taste awesome if you follow the recipe I just linked.  I'll have to give these another go.

Zucchini and Rice Gratin

I  got this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  It was a perfect dinner because it hits up almost all the food groups. There's even eggs in the rice mixture for some protein.

I used some zucchini and eggplant because that's what I had on hand.  I also roasted onions and garden tomatoes, but failed to photograph that tray.

I chose to use saffron rice and by chose I mean that was the only kind of rice in the cabinet.

Here she is all cooked up.  This was crazy good so you should eat it for dinner also. That's all I have to say about that.

Ridiculous Brownies

The blog I got this recipe from dubbed these brownies "better than crack brownies," but I just couldn't see calling them that.  Are they addictive like crack? Sure.  Are they tastier than crack? Most likely.  Are they better than crack?  Like a better high? Better how?  I really could not say.  So let's just refer to these as ridiculously gluttonous brownies.

These have a lot of things in it, but they are pretty easy to make.  First you start off with making a regular brownie mix, sprinkling on peanut butter cups and peanuts midway through the baking.

The final step is what takes the brownies to the next level.  You melt peanut butter and chocolate then stir in rice krispies (or crispy rice if stop & shop has a better sale on that).  This mixture gets spread over the top of the cooked brownies.

The only bad part is that you have to wait for it to set up in the refridgerator before it can be properly devoured.

Bet you wish this was your birthday present, huh?

Skillet Eggs with Zucchini

Eggs were on sale at the A&P a few weeks ago and we got a little too excited about it.  We ended up with 54 eggs in the refrigerator.  Needless to say, we needed to up the ante on our egg consumption.  That's how I ended up choosing this recipe for dinner.

The recipe is from Food Network magazine.  They call it skillet eggs with squash, but I refuse to call zucchini squash.  So this is my skillet eggs with zucchini.

Starts out with some scallions frying in the pan.

Then the shredded zucchini hops into the pan.  Along with some salt, pepper, and nutmeg.  I didn't freshly grate it even though I had the capabilities to do so, please don't be terribly disappointed.

When the zucchini is cooked down, I made some indents in the mixture with the back of a serving spoon to nest the eggs in.

I actually cracked the eggs into a little bowl before putting them into their nest! Can you believe it? I dirtied some thing that was not entirely necessary!  Thankfully my mother did the dishes.

Cheddar cheese gets all over this eggy zucchini goodness.

 I toasted up some sliced Italian bread to go with it.  I will say 2 of these eggs was a serious meal.  Loved it!

What a Weekend!

So I had a pretty serious weekend: major progress on my 1,000 piece Starry Night puzzle, brunch, new glasses, Big Gay Ice Cream Shop, shopping in SoHo, beers at the Craftsman.

Cannot wait to get lenses in these babies!

American Glob: vanilla ice cream, pretzels, sea salt, chocolate dip.

Then came Sunday where I had a whole list of this that I did not want to get done.  So I thought I would cook instead of running errands!

I decided to make that roasted garlic ricotta pasta salad again, but with some twists.

I mixed pesto into the ricotta mixture, and put arugula and tomatoes into the mix.

We also slow cooked some pork, with barbecue sauce, onions, garlic, salt and pepper.  I made a simple oil and vinegar cole slaw to go atop the pulled pork sandwiches. 

Annnnd now I can relax and catch up on season 10 of Project Runway.