This dish is the perfect meal after a long day of physical activity. It’s healthy, it”s full of protein and best of all – it is delicious! My best running buddy gave me a wonderful cookbook a few years ago for my birthday, The Runner’s World Cookbook. It’s a great collection of recipes for pre-run, post-run, recovery meals from a race, et. created by other runners. I have thoroughly enjoyed that cookbook and this is one of my favorite recipes from it. This is a recipe that lends itself to some creative embellishment if you so desire. A friend of mine added mushrooms to his dish and really liked it. I’ve added spinach instead of parsley and there are times it didn’t have any green color to it at all because I didn’t have any in my fridge. I’ve also changed up some of the amounts so its a bit different than the original recipe.

My son loves this meal but we have to sometimes bribe him to eat the beans and tomatoes too. He will pick all the shrimp out if you let him. And, if you have leftovers – you have to keep a close watch on them or the shrimp will go missing from those too!

 

 

Continue reading “White Beans and Shrimp with Tomatoes”

This is another favorite of my family. I know lamb is not utilized very much in the south but we absolutely love it. It’s quick and easy and delicious.

I found this recipe in the Food and Wine Cooking From Scratch Pasta Cookbook several years ago. It’s just a basic tomato sauce with spaghetti and ground lamb except this recipe uses cumin. Cumin is a spice often used in middle eastern and Mediterranean cuisine. It pairs beautifully with the lamb. You can find ground lamb pretty easily now at Publix or whole foods. 

My 11 year old even loves this dish. If you have the fresh mint on hand, I would highly suggest using it, it really brings the dish together.

 

Continue reading “Spaghetti with Lamb Meat Sauce”

If you’re like me, sometimes you just need a good fix of Chinese Food. We used to order take out but that can get expensive over time!  I started trying to experiment with my own recipes about 10 years ago. We love this one, it uses shrimp and I think it’s better than what you can get at most take out restaurants. It makes quite a bit so you’ll have plenty of leftovers if you don’t have a large family. I also love that it is gluten free, egg free and dairy free. Finding a Chinese dish free of those three things can be difficult! Our son’s dairy and egg allergies are so severe that we can’t even take a chance on eating Chinese food out and about. Even a small cross contamination could send him to the emergency room.  Szechuan cuisine is typically very spicy and originated in the Sichuan province of China. We have younger tastebuds at our dinner table so this recipe has a very small kick to it. You can definitely increase the amount of red pepper flakes to increase your heat. This takes a little more time than most of my recipes, about 45 minutes from start to finish. But oh my it’s worth it when you taste it!

So this recipe has been a recent discovery. I found it a couple of years ago in one of my quick from scratch food and wine cookbooks. I have adapted so that our family could eat it. It was one of my first forays into cooking with leeks and I must say – they are quite tasty! I will definitely be cooking with them again.

 I used bacon in my recipe but you could also use pancetta or probably even prosciutto. If you’ve read my blog before you know my love affair with bacon. I should probably seek some kind of counseling. But as I see it – as long as I can keep running and keep my cholesterol down  – I should get some kind of reward right? Why not bacon?!

Ok. Back to the recipe. This one is fairly easy to make and quite tasty. My 11 year old even liked it but he probably inherited my love for bacon. You could also substitute just about any type of pasta. But I like the thickness of the linguine, I think it holds the sauce well since it’s a non-traditional sauce.

Continue reading “Bacon Leek Linguine with Goat Cheese”