Sometimes the best place to get recipe inspiration is the farmers' market. I love strolling around on a low-key weekend morning and checking out what produce is in season, coming up with potential recipe ideas, and picking up some goodies to experiment with. San Diego area farmers' market are a foodie's paradise, because so much awesome produce is grown locally here - not to mention all of the amazing local purveyors around, including bread makers, nut butter producers, olive oil companies, bakeries... and the list goes on. Recently I got turned onto a local vegan crouton and cashew cheese company, and I've been sprinkling their products on everything! A few weekends ago, I was walking around the Vista Farmers' Market, and I kept seeing asparagus around. Since it's starting to be in peak ... [Read More]
pasta recipes
Spain Food Sherpas’ Tapas Cooking Class + Spinach Porrilla Pasta
Happy 2018 friends! I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season. Between traveling to Florida for my father-in-law's wedding, then flying up to the northeast for Christmas with family, then heading home to the west coast for New Year's, I had an awesome, whirlwind Christmastime. More on that later, but today we are rewinding a bit to recap another part of my recent trip to Spain: learning about the local gastronomy in the southern city of Malaga via a cooking class with Spain Food Sherpas. For awhile, I had participating in an international cooking class on my bucket list, so the day that I took a tapas cooking class with Spain Food Sherpas was a special one. I was extra excited because I adore tapas, and I woke up that morning looking forward to learning more about Spanish food ... [Read More]
Pasta Shells with Easy Arugula Cherry Tomato Sauce [vegan]
Sometimes keeping it simple is the best. Every Easter when I was growing up - and really, almost every other holiday - my family would go over to my grandma's for a big family get together. I've talked about my amazing grandma before, but she loved to cook for everyone - and she pretty much always overdid it with how much food she made. There would be a ridiculous amount of dishes for everyone to enjoy. From a giant antipasto salad and homemade breads, to a gigantic spread for the main course, to probably half a dozen desserts, complete with her annual bunny-shaped Easter cake, my grandma always spent days preparing. She also always made me eggplant parmigiana because I loved it (and later on, I developed an allergy to it, probably from eating it too much!). One type ... [Read More]
Healthier Fettuccine Alfredo with Spinach & Tomato
Hello strangers! So, last week was probably the first full week that I did not post on this little corner of the internet of mine since I started this blog. Trust me, it wasn't by choice! I was pretty much in technology hell all week. My beloved computer had been running really slow, and I was troubleshooting and running back and forth to the Apple Store like my life depended on it - because well, it kind of does. I work on my computer every single day and depend on it as a publicist, blogger, freelance writer and health coach. So, you can imagine that I have a lot of stuff on this computer of mine! To make a long story short, the good news is that my computer was salvaged and is now working fast. But what's the bad news? Apple restored my computer without consulting me ... [Read More]
Avocado, Spinach & Walnut Pesto Pasta
Good old St. Paddy's Day is tomorrow, and while I didn't make any Irish soda bread last weekend or have a blast celebrating at any parades, I wanted to share a green recipe in honor of the holiday. My heritage is part Irish, and I have lots of St. Paddy's Day memories: my family getting together at my grandma's house (who was Italian, but loved any excuse to celebrate!) for corned beef & cabbage (hold the corned beef for me), potatoes and Irish soda bread; and day drinking at many Irish parades in Jersey as a college kid. I kind of would like to be wearing green shamrock stickers on my face and day drinking with my girlfriends right about now actually, but any who... here's a fun little holiday tidbit: The color green being associated with Ireland dates back to at least ... [Read More]
Buttery Lemon Pasta with Collared Greens & Mushrooms
Since I arrived in Jersey over a week ago, my diet has included way more of these... And NONE of these: I miss my usual daily smoothie, but I'm too chilly to eat them here! Good thing the soups I've been eating have been yummy. Though I haven't been able to experiment too much in the kitchen lately, one night last week my mom and I had the chance to come up with a new recipe together. She had mistakenly bought collared greens instead of kale, so we sought to figure out what we could do with it.... I had never played around with collared greens before, so I searched the Web for some meal inspiration. I got a basic understanding of collared greens and the flavors that seemed to be paired with it often. This is the yummy dish we wound up with: Buttery Lemon Pasta with ... [Read More]