My Mommy's Pasta

It's Mother's Day, and I am officially missing my mother more than ever. I wish I was not a 10 hour drive away from her today, but hey at least there's Skype. Thank goooodness for Skype.

Anyway, my mom makes the most amazing food. She is the reason why I even know how to make a grilled cheese or anything else for that matter. She is also the reason why I learned to eat my vegetables. She has her fair share of recipes but one of my favorites that she makes is a summer pasta dish. It is pasta mixed with spinach peppers, itialian dressing, and crab meat, my favorite. The best thing about this pasta is that it not only tastes great the day of but it tastes great a few days after too. A lot of pasta dishes do not keep as well as this one. Which is great news for those of you who love left overs. I promise you will fall in love with this recipe.

What you will need:

1 box of tri color rotini pasta

1 pack of crab meat (imitation or real your choice)

1 bag of fresh spinach

1 red pepper 

1 green pepper 

1 yellow pepper

1 red onion

1 pack of cherry tomatoes

1 bottle of Wishbone Robusto Italian dressing

salt & pepper to taste

Italian seasoning to taste

How to make it:

First start of boiling the pasta, after the pasta has been cooked, drain it under cold running water. Put the pasta in a bowl, and let it sit. Cup up the onions and peppers into thin slices, and cut the cherry tomatoes in half. Shred up the crab or dice, which ever you prefer. Mix the peppers, onions, and tomatoes into the pasta. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning, salt and pepper, over the pasta. Now mix in the crab meat and the spinach. Pour half the bottle of Italian dressing into the pasta and mix. Leave in the fridge for 30 minutes, to an hour and serve cold.

Lesson Learned

I don't know about you guys but I am one of those people that likes to say "To heck with the measuring cup! I have everything under control!" Yes, I would much rather guess it and take my chances any day over pulling out a measuring cup and going through that whole entire process. Kind of lazy, I know. I am not going to lie, sometimes it works, and the food comes out great and other times I wish I could go back in time and correct that mistake. I am now starting to learn that measuring cups were made for a reason, and they are actually pretty useful when you do actually use them.

One measuring cup that I have been looking at is the OXO 3 Piece Angled Measuring cup. I never thought I would see a "cool" measuring cup, or really any measuring cup that I would want to buy, but this one is a must have. What's different about the OXO measuring cup is that it has a band on the inside that lets you measure from a birds eye view. No more trying to pour, stop, check, and pour some more. The OXO Measuring cup definitely makes it a lot easier to measure, an it is quick. Which is great for all the impatient cooks out their like me. It may be time to ditch the old traditional measuring cup thats been in the family for 15 years and get yourself the OXO. Click here to check it out for yourself.

Shrimp Fried Rice mmhhhmmm

One of my favorite kinds of food is Asian food. I love Asian food. As a matter of fact I had Asian food yesterday.

On a side note, if you are in the Midtown Atlanta area I strongly encourage you to visit Saigon Cafe, on Peachtree St. That's what I had yesterday. I had the General Tsao's Chicken and loved every single bite of it. I loved it so much that I forced myself to stop before I ate all of it and saved some in a to-go box so I could have it again later.

Back to my Asian food obsession. Shrimp Fried Rice is my go to food when I'm eating at an Asian restaurant and can't decided what to get. To my surprise I have recently found out that it's not that hard to make at all. Good for me. Now I can make it from home instead of ordering delivery or going out. I found a video that gives some pretty good instructions on how to make it. Here it is:

Remake Your Favorite Restaurant Meals

I know we all go out to our favorite restaurants and get the same meal every single time. I certainly do. There are just some restaurants that are known for some meals. I love to go to restaurant when I'm home called Guapos. It's a Mexican restaurant that is family owned. Nothing else can compete with Guapos. You can walk in there any given night and it will be packed, that's how good it is. I recently went when I was home for Spring Break and I fell in love all over again. Whenever I go I always get chicken tacos. They are to die for. They are the kind of tacos that you could eat all day. I rarely share my food with people but I always share these tacos. They are too good not to.

Ok, sorry, I think you get the point now. They are GOOD tacos. Now that we have that out the way I can tell you that I found this recipe that I think comes as close to these tacos as possible. They are basically shredded chicken tacos cooked in a tomato sauce. So I followed the recipe and tried to re-create the Guapos chicken tacos, minus the taco. I just made the chicken. This is what it came out to be.

They weren't exactly shredded the way they were supposed to be but they were close enough for my first time. Although they weren't shredded they were muy delicioso. 

If you like the picture above or are interested in making some shredded chicken tacos for yourself here is the recipe.

Delicious Baked Salmon

I am not a huge fan of meat. In fact, I only really eat Seafood. I will occasionally eat fish. Key word being occasionally. I'm always looking for new fish recipes. I mostly eat salmon so that is what I spend most of my time searching for. I stumbled across this new salmon recipe, and I decided to give it a try. It is actually really tasty, I loved it. It is also easy to make, which is a big plus. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 tablespoons light olive oil
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped
• 2 (6 ounce) fillets salmon

Directions

1. In a medium glass bowl, prepare marinade by mixing garlic, light olive oil, basil, salt, pepper, lemon juice and parsley. Place salmon fillets in a medium glass baking dish, and cover with the marinade. Marinate in the refrigerator about 1 hour, turning occasionally.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
3. Place fillets in aluminum foil, cover with marinade, and seal. Place sealed salmon in the glass dish, and bake 35 to 45 minutes, until easily flaked with a fork.

Here is the link to where I found it:

http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/baked-salmon-ii/Detail.aspx

If you love baked salmon I highly recommend this recipe. Here is a picture of how it turned out:

 

White Pizzas Made Easy!!

My last post was about the fabulous pizza that I had at Fellini's. Recently I thought, why not make my own white pizza, I shouldn't have to wait to go to Fellini's. So I decided to look for a recipe online. I found a white pizza recipe from Rachel Ray and it is as close to the pizza that I had at Fellini's, and it is simple. Perfect. Here it is.

Ingredients

• 1 store bought pizza dough - or pick one up from your favorite pizzeria
• Extra- virgin olive oil, for drizzling
• 2 cups whole or part skim ricotta
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• Handful flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella or provolone, 1 pouch
• 10 fresh basil leaves, 1/2 cup, shredded

Directions

Preheat a pizza stone if you use one along with the oven to 425 degrees F.

Stretch dough to form a pie and transfer to stone or pizza baking tray. Pierce the dough with the tines of a fork in several places.Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil around the crust. Mix the ricotta cheesewith garlic and parsley and season it with salt and black pepper. Spread the ricotta across the dough. Top the pizza with mozzarellaor provolone. Bake until crispy, 20 minutes. Top the white pizza pie with the shredded basil leaves, cut and serve.

And here is the link:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/white-pizza-recipe/index.html

The only difference between this recipe and Fellini's is that instead of garlic she uses basil leaves, but if you prefer garlic, just pick up a tiny jar of minced Garlic and you can top the pizza with about 2-3 table spoons.

Heavenly Pizza

If you live in the Atlanta area, or even frequently visit Atlanta, you should know by now that there are some great places to eat around here.  There is great Chinese food, there is great American food, and there's great Italian food, we have it all.  You can also find some really great pizza places, one of my favorites is Fellini's.  Fellini's has many locations throughout Atlanta, and surrounding areas but my favorite location is the one on Peachtree St in Buckhead, maybe because that is the closest one to where I live.  I love the environment as much as I love the pizza.  You can get a small, medium, large, or a slice of pizza, all of which are generous portions.  If you are into New York style pizza, and anything better than Domino's or Pizza Hut (not trying to knock them) you will definitely enjoy Fellini's.  In fact my parents and I being native New Yorkers found Fellini's pizza a breath of fresh air.  So whenever you have some spare time, make sure you hit up this place up, you will not be disappointed.

Here is Jen enjoying her vegetarian pizza.

And this is my amazing White Pizza, if you love cheese, you will love this pizza.