Getting up to Speed

The morning after Randy's and mine adventure to Aqua, we had to leave St.John's a day earlier than expected. Sebastian was boarding at the SPCA in Grand Falls and they called me to tell me he had ingested a lot of Easter grass and been throwing up, not eating, and not going to the bathroom. After a (thankfully) not expensive vet appointment, he is on the mend but it was a scary moment for me nonetheless. So if you have pets, don't use Easter grass! It's indigestible and if it gets wrapped around a pet's intestines, you're looking at a 600 dollar surgery.

I left St.John's super early (7 a.m.) and was driving all day so by the time I got to Grand Falls, I was lazy and tired and didn't want to cook. Randy and I picked at food for most of the day which included Pogo's, chips, and ice cream.

On Wednesday, I made a recipe for Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi that I got from a Campbell's cookbook my sister gave me a few years back. I made one tweak - it calls for frozen dumpling-shaped pasta and I just used some penne noodles.

The recipe is really simple with only a few ingedients. You'll need:
- 2 cups frozen cut leaf spinach, thawed and well drained
- 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
- 1/4 cup grated Romano cheese
- 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
- 1 1/2 cups Prego Traditional Italian sauce (or any Pasta Sauce will do)
- Half a box of penne noodles

Boil the pasta. Add the spinach during the last three minutes of cooking. Drain the pasta mixture well in a colander. Return the pasta mixture to the saucepot.

Stir the sauce, Romano cheese, and ricotta cheese in the saucepot. Cook over medium heat until the mixture is hot and bubbling, stirring occasionally. Top with the mozzarella cheese:

Not a great picture, but I took it on my phone. This makes six servings and is a tasty meal with easy-to-find ingredients and requires very little prep and cook time.

On Thursday, I had planned to make some chicken wings with homemade pasta salad. I boiled a package of chicken wings for ten minutes. While they were boiling, I made a sauce comprised of:
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/2 cup ketchup
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon worchestershire sauce
- 1 teaspoon mustard

Place the sauce over the wings:

and bake for an hour at 325 degrees. Cover with tin foil before placing in the oven.

While I was waiting for the chicken wings to cook, I made a pasta salad to serve with the wings. To make the pasta salad, you need:
- 2 1/3 cups colored vegetable pasta
- 2 tomatoes (chopped)
- 2 green onions (chopped)  ** I didn't have any, so I omitted this
- 1/2 green pepper
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup ketchup
- 1/4 cup vinegar
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- salt and pepper to taste

Once the noodles were boiled, I let them cool and mixed all the rest of the ingredients together. I mixed it all around and served alongside the wings when they finished cooking:

The wings were perfect - the chicken fell off the bone easily and the sauce was subtle but delicious and really made the chicken moist. The pasta salad was great as well. Both of these recipes came from a book of recipes my mom hand-wrote and gave to me as a Christmas gift one year. Thanks Mom!

Yesterday I went with a recipe for 'Mini Pizza Tarts' that I found in my Makkovik Community Cookbook I purchased while teaching in Makkovik, Labrador three years ago. All that's needed for these are
- a box of 16 tart shells (thawed)
- half a green pepper (chopped)
- half a can of Klik (chopped)
- One onion (chopped)
- One can of tomato soup
- Pizza spice (I substituted with a tablespoon of oregano and teaspoon of basil)

All you do is simmer the tomato soup in a sauce pan. Once it's hot, add all other ingredients except the cheese and tart shells. Stir it all around and then pour into the tart shells:

For some reason, I could not get that picture to rotate.



Top the pizza tarts with mozzarella cheese and bake in a 325 degree oven for about 15 minutes. I served these tarts with the leftover pasta salad from the day before:

These tarts were awesome. I know some of you are probably turned off by the fact that I used Klik (a questionable lunchmeat) but as long as you can get past the appearance of it while you are cutting it, it actually makes a good addition to the tart (although I am sure you could use any meat you like that you would normally put on a pizza). Randy especially liked these and it was nice that since I made 16, we had several leftover which made for some nice bite-size snacks while drinking wine and playing Mario Party (which I won, boo yah!).

Today I am getting a break from cooking while Randy cooks a roast. I was initially quite reluctant to having him cook a roast - I have flashbacks of being really grossed out by roast when I was younger. But now that I am older, and my tastebuds have become more accepting and mature, I'm willing to give old hated foods a re-try. So he will be cooking a roast with homemade gravy, potatoes, carrots, and pease pudding. I'll keep you posted on the verdict.

Shoutouts from the past few days include: Bacon-wrapped Scallops, Miss Vickie's chips, dark chocolate, and homemade chocolate chip banana bread (thanks, Ma!)

Here's Sebastian with his tongue stuck out....d'awwww........