SpaghettiOs with Meatballs

Not the kid kind though! This was the adult version! My friend E. found these cute little O's at Trader Joe's. As soon as I saw them, I knew I must have them. I made a sauce with slow roasted yellow onions, garlic and pancetta. Then I added some nice thick Pomi Tomato sauce as well as some left over red wine from the night before. I then created my famous meatballs and made them into minis, browned them and tossed into the sauce. After a couple hours .... Voila! Served with a very hearty Italian Red wine, can't beat it!

Thursday Night

another late night spinning. Luckily, I had a few minutes before we left to toss together a gratin. So all we had to do was pop it into the oven and Voila, lovely french food for dinner! This was an endive and prosciutto gratin that I learned to make in my French Cooking classes a couple weeks ago. When I started putting it together, I had a feeling L. was going to give it a BIG VETO like he did to the Leek Soup; but, he did not! It was too tasty with all that smokiness of the Prosciutto and cheesy sauce!

Cold Weather Food

for a WARM night! Well, the menus were planned last weekend so we will eat! One of our favorite winter dishes is a spicy Kale Soup with White Beans - L. loves an egg on top, I do not like eggs on things that they should not be on .... pizza, soup, etc... I have been dying to make some dishes from my French Cooking weekend so I tossed together this super yummy watercress and celery root salad. Dessert, we had some Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream left over. I found it not as sweet as I would had liked so I made a warm caramel sauce for the top - okay, after sitting in the freezer for a day and a half the pumpkin has really combined in flavor and with the caramel sauce on top, can you say "Thanksgiving"?

The Incredible Edible Egg

to the rescue. We love our Tuesday Night spin class, except for the fact that we do not get out of there until almost 830pm and our instructor is informing us that we NEED to drink a liter of water and eat protein within the next 45 minutes to fully reap the benefits! Okay ... besides eating a crappy bar this is next to impossible. By the time we walk thru the gym, say hi to a couple people, get into the car, drive home, look for parking and then attempt to make something, we are past the 45 minutes! Until now! We declare Tuesday EGG NIGHT!

Sauteed zucchini with shallots and olive oil turned into an Omelet served along side a tossed green salad and some crusty warm bread ... and some water and a Liter of Wine?! ;)

Fall was almost in the air .....

Last week, definitely felt like fall ... crisp air filled with the aroma of crunching leaves and even rain, that left us cold, damp and turning on the heat. This inspired me to grocery shop thinking along the lines of comfort foods - lots of apples, squash, whole wheat pastas, that sort of thing; warm cozy food! Well, the weather turned, the day was hot and the evening was romantically warm. Which was good as it gave us a chance to put away the patio heater, the deck umbrella and clean up the garden.

Tonight's dinner started out as a cozy warm evening in (due to what we thought was a early fall/winter arrival), but came around as a nice evening at home, together! Linguine and Clams served over whole wheat pasta! A glass of crisp buttery white wine! A loaf of warm Crusty Bread! Homemade Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream for dessert - which, was inspired by my step-mother's pumpkin pie recipe, she makes the best pie I have ever had!

As well this dinner was part of a special event GYO -Grow Your Own. Our hostess, Andrea, over at Andrea's Recipes initiated it. Thanks to the insane weather we have been having ... rain on & off the past couple of weeks, upper 70's and low 80's this week, our herb garden is doing outstanding! All the peppers we thought would die are turning vibrant red and the basil and thyme are growing like crazy again! For this dish we used our Portuguese Peppers and Basil from our garden.