Skillet Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables

This recipe comes from BHG's magazine April 2013.

Becky and I went to the Relish Cooking Show in Akron last night, check below the recipe to see how it went!

Ingredients: 

-4 oz. dried spaghetti
-2 Tbsp. peanut or vegetable oil
-12 oz. asparagus, ends trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces (2 ½ cups; 14 spears)
-6 cloves garlic, sliced
-3 cups red cherry tomatoes
-¾ tsp. salt
-¾ cup chopped fresh basil
-¼ tsp. freshly ground pepper
-½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
-Lemon wedges

Cook the pasta according to package directions. You'll want to reserve about half a cup of pasta water. Drain and rinse.

In a small skillet caramelize some lemons. I sprayed a small amount of cooking spray into a pan, then cooked the lemon slices one to two minutes on each size, until carmalized. 

In a large skillet fry the garlic for 30 seconds.

Add the asparagus and saute for 2 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, salt and basil, stir fry for 30 seconds.
Add the spaghetti and mix well.
Add the pasta water until the desired consistency is reached.

Serve with Parmesan cheese and the lemon slices.

You could add additional lemon juice if desired.

My mom asked me to make this recipe because she saw it in Better Home and Garden's magazine. I thought it was good, plus J. and my dad enjoyed it. However, my mom hated it. She didn't like the basil in the pasta especially. I thought it was a nice summery pasta recipe, because of the citrus flavor. I will use less tomatoes next time though. Overall, I think this recipe was fine, my dad liked it so much that he took it to lunch the next day.

_________________________________________________________________________________
Relish Cooking Show Akron, Ohio 2013

There were so many samples at the Expo from local Akron-area resturants.

These cupcakes were our favorite, the one on the right was Mexican vanilla and it was delicious!
These were from Cupcake Binge. 

We got to hang-out back stage at the VIP party, with wine complementary of  Breitenbach (we loved the  Frost Fire wine, it was a sweet white.)

Then we sat down to for the show.

We had awesome third row seats with a great view of the stage.

We had such a great time last night! We enjoyed meeting Chef Brian Morris and we learned a lot of great techniques from his show. With our VIP tickets we were able to enjoy a special VIP party where we got our Relish cookbooks signed by him and with those VIP tickets we also got some great gifts such as coupons for local restaurants and some sauces to try in our dishes compliments of More Than Gourmet. This was the second time Relish came to Akron and we will be going back!

After the show we went to the Brickhouse Tavern for some post-show appetizers and cocktails. The Blood Orange Whiskey sour was delicious, I would highly recommend it!

Americana Ice Cream Cupcakes

Happy Memorial Day!! My family hosts a picnic the Sunday before every Memorial Day and my dad wanted me to come up with a dessert recipe to serve the family. The only problem was that J. and I spent the weekend in Sandusky at Becky's lake house and then drove home with only a few hours to spare for a recipe. Enter the ice cream cupcake recipe from Bubbly Nature Creations the cupcakes are adorable and great for summer due to the addition of the ice cream. I adapted this recipe to help it fit my time constraints and my taste.

Other Memorial Day Recipes: Red, White and Blue Sangria.

Ingredients: 
Cake
-Stars and Stripes Funfetti cake mix and the ingredients on the box to make cake
-Cupcake liners
-1/4 cup sprinkles to mix with batter optional

Ice Cream
-3 cups of ice cream of your choice

Whipped Cream Frosting:
-Cool Whip whipped cream frosting

Spoon about a tablespoon of cake mix into the cupcake liner.
Do not do more than that, the cake mix will rise!! You just want a little bit of cake.
You don't want to cook these too long, mine were done after about 8-10 minutes.

I used Stars and Stripes Funfetti for my cake. 

  

Once the cupcakes have cooled, top with the softened ice cream.

Top with whipped cream frosting and sprinkles right before serving.

                                      

These were refreshing and so cute! I really liked that these were small because I served them at a picnic and after you've had a whole plate of food it's nice to enjoy something sweet but small. One problem I did have was that I overfilled the cupcakes before baking them and I ended up with full sized cupcakes -- I think using a tablespoon to measure the batter really alleviates that problem. Overall these were a huge success and perfect for adapting to other holidays or events.

Cookie Dough Popsicles

I got these new popsicle molds, and I'm really excited to get to use them! There are a lot of recipes for fun popsicles online, and I wanted to try some out. I'll be making a few more this summer for sure. This was a good first run using the molds, they were pretty easy to make, and they tasted pretty good. I got this one from girlichef.

This recipe made 5 popsicles for us.

Ingredients:

-2 1/2 cups almond milk
-2/3 cup sugar
-2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
-mini chocolate chips (we also used mint chocolate chips)

-pinch of salt

Popsicle molds!

Put the chocolate chips or mint chips in the bottom of the molds.

Mix the other ingredients and pour into the molds.

Add the top.

Freeze for at least 4 hours.

These worked out really well! I'm excited to use the popsicle molds again. The only thing I thought could have made them better is if the chocolate was mixed throughout the popsicle rather than concentrated at the top.

Gnocchi with Grilled Grapefruit and Asparagus

This is our 300th post on Vegetarian & Cooking! It's amazing we've had so many posts in just over a year. Check out some of our earlier posts and look for lots more in the future!

I love grilling, but usually when I think of grilled food, grapefruit, asparagus and gnocchi are not the first three things that come to mind. But I found this recipe from A Spicy Perspective that combines all three and the grill. It turns out the grill is a good way to make lots of foods. This was also a great way to get both a fruit and a vegetable into a single meal. This would also be good to impress people with because all the colors make the dish look good.

Ingredients:

-1 grapefruit
-1 asparagus bunch
-1 box potato gnocchi
-1 Tbsp olive oil
-1 Tbsp butter
-1 Tbsp flour
-1/4 cup heavy cream
-1 cup vegetable stock
-Salt and pepper
-Chives for garnish

Cut the grapefruit into 8ths.

Slice the ends off the asparagus.

Coat both in oil and salt.

Melt the flour, butter, and cream in a pan over medium heat.

Add the vegetable stock.
We used a burner on the grill and it got pretty hot.
Remove from heat and set aside.

Cook the gnocchi according to package directions.
This took about the same amount of time to cook as the
grapefruit and asparagus did, so if you start them about
the same time they should be ready to serve together.

Grill the grapefruit for about 2-3 minutes on each side.

The asparagus takes about the same amount of time.
It was a little difficult to turn over without it
falling through the grates.

Add the gnocchi to the roux and coat.

Put everything on one plate.
Add salt, pepper, and green onions to the gnocchi.

Eat by mixing everything together in one delicious bite.

Or squeeze the grapefruit over the pasta. 

This turned out to be a pretty good combination. I thought this was going to take a long time to make, but it was probably only 20 minutes from cutting the fruit and vegetables to serving, especially since the grilling time was so short.

Lemon-Zucchini Loaf with Lemon Glaze

I found this recipe on Pintrest linked to a blog called NancyCreative. Nancy said she decided to make this late one evening then went to bed hoping the loaf would taste good in the morning. Not only am I super jealous that Nancy just thinks up great recipes like this, the recipe received nothing but rave reviews so I had to try it.

I also wanted to be able to use part of this zucchini from my garden which is bigger than my forearm.

Ingredients: 
Lemon Loaf
-2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
-2 teaspoons baking powder
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-2 eggs
-1/2 cup canola oil
-2/3 cup sugar
-1/2 cup buttermilk
-Juice of 1 lemon (or 2 Tablespoons lemon juice)
-Zest of 1 lemon
-1 cup grated zucchini (you don’t need to peel the zucchini before grating it)

Lemon Glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
Juice of 1 lemon (or 2 Tablespoons lemon juice)

Those who read my blog regularly know that I don't typically use more expensive ingredients so I used vegetable oil and the milk I had in my refrigerator (which I'm sure did nothing but make my loaf more fattening). Comments on the original blog suggested adding some white vinegar to the milk in order to mimic the tartness of buttermilk, I didn't see that suggestion until after I had started baking.

I also didn't have lemon zest, so I added a little extra lemon juice.

Preheat the oven to 350.

In a large bowl (large enough to eventually hold all of the ingredients) mix the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.

Beat the eggs, oil and sugar together in a bowl.

Add milk, lemon juice and zest -- blend.
Add grated zucchini and blend.

Add the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients which were set aside and mix.

Pour into a greased loaf pan.

Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center

Let cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the loaf pan and cool completely on a cooling rack.

While the loaf is cooling make the glaze.

Mix the powdered sugar and lemon juice together to make a thick glaze.

Spoon the glaze over the loaf.

Yet another perfect recipe to help utilize summer zucchini this lemon-loaf had the perfect balance of both lemony and sweet flavors and the zucchini helps to keep the loaf moist. This is a recipe that will be made again!