I hate wasting food.

Before I met Nate I would try to serve myself small portions of food, but with my eyes being bigger than my stomach, there would always still be too much for me on the plate. Since I hated wasting food, I would force myself to eat the last few mouthfuls rather than wasting it. (Don’t ask me how I developed this behavior since my mom never enforced the “clean plate” rule!)

Luckily Nate’s active lifestyle gives him an endless appetite. Now, rather than forcing myself to eat something, I just put it on his plate This solves the problem of having little bits of meal leftover, but it still doesn’t solve the problem of leftover ingredients.

Obviously if a recipe calls for buttermilk, or fresh rosemary, you will have copious amounts left. I had both ingredients sitting in my fridge (courtesy of some baked buttermilk rosemary chicken) for over a week because I refused to get rid of them.

I knew those two ingredients happened to be a perfect combo for something sweet and so I finally got myself to mix them together into a lovely cake.

This cake is light (in texture, not in calories), not overly sweet, and perfect for brunch with a cup of tea! The rosemary flavor is strong, but I love it that way. If you’re not as big a fan of rosemary, feel free to cut back.

I couldn’t stop myself from eating this. It’s so buttery, soft and flavorful.  I honestly don’t know what a tea cake is, but this is what I’d imagine The perfect thing to go with your Mother’s Day brunch!

And with your leftover buttermilk and rosemary, you can perhaps invent something even better!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!!!

Since my grandpa passed away a couple months ago, my mom and aunt decided to help my grandmother go through her house to clean it up. Both my grandma and grandpa love(ed) to save things…I unfortunately inherited this packrat tendency.

This cleanup was necessary both because their house contains all sorts of crap, but also because my grandma will be downsizing to an apartment.

During the cleanup my mom found and bequeathed to me a collection of recipes my grandfather had saved.

The ironic thing is that my grandfather didn’t cook (though he loved to watch the Food Network), and my grandmother also doesn’t cook…which makes you wonder what exactly he was saving these recipes for.

I think I also inherited his recipe clipping addiction.

When my mom mentioned giving me this collection, my grandmother got upset, saying that maybe she would make some of these recipes now…even though she hadn’t made any of them for the last 50 years.

A lot of his recipe clippings came from newspapers and the back of food cartons, and some were hand written ones scribbled while watching cooking shows on tv.

The recipes were super organized. He had different envelopes on each of which he wrote a category: Dessert, Salad/Vegetables, Side Dishes, Meat and Poultry, etc. There must have been 10 different categories.

Going through each category I was able to learn a little something about my grandpa- his favorite foods. There were about 20 recipes for the practically the same dish in each category, though the sources varied.

Apparently his favorite dessert was apple crisp/pie, he loved any type of chili, and in the pasta category, he preferred Lasagna.

The recipe in this post came about from adapting one of “his” recipes. I think it must have come from the back of some lasagna noodle box, and I have to say that it turned out delicious! I’ll be sharing more of his recipes in the coming weeks.

When my mother gave me my grandpa’s recipe clippings, I knew exactly what I had to do- finally cook the dishes my grandpa had been saving for someone to make.

I guess maybe he was saving it for me

This is one of my family’s most important and delicious recipes. For us, it originated with and has thus been named after my Aunt Rita, although I’m not sure where she got it from originally,  But what’s important is that once she found it, she saved it!

This isn’t a traditional noodle kugel recipe. For one thing, it has no fruit in it, and the noodles are angel hair rather than thick egg noodles.

In addition, it has the addition of three forms of dairy products (four if you count the butter). The consistency comes out like a hybrid of a kugel and a cheesecake and it is topped with THE MOST buttery, delicious graham cracker crumb topping.

You don’t even need to save it for Jewish holiday dinners, although that’s when we usually make it.

I know it’s not much to look at, but people I’m telling you, I could seriously eat this for every meal for the rest of my life and I would never get sick of it, although my thighs might protest- it’s more like a dessert than a meal from the calorie perspective.

*Note that if you make it, yours will be slightly thicker than mine…I halved the recipe and made it in an 8×8 pan which is a little too large for half a recipe.

Recipe is at the bottom of the post!

In case you couldn’t figure it out, May is #pastalove month!

Please join in on the #pastalove fun by linking up any pasta recipe from the month of May 2012. Don’t forget to link back to this post, so that your readers know to come stop by the #pastalove event! The twitter hashtag is #pastalove . 

I’m hosting along with these other fine folks:

Astig Vegan, Badger Girl Learns to Cook, BigFatBaker, Bon à croquer, Cake Duchess, Hobby And More, Mis Pensamientos, No One Likes Crumbley Cookies, Oh Cake, Rico sin Azúcar, Simply Reem, Soni’s Food for Thought, Teaspoon of Spice, That Skinny Chick Can Bake!!!, The Spicy RD, The Wimpy Vegetarian, Vegetarian Mamma, You Made That?, Vegan Yack Attack

Please link up your recipe below

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

The other day at work, Nate and I were talking on gchat and he asked me what I was making for dinner:

me: why don’t you get a pizza for dinner

Nate: im just not sure i want pizza

me: well how do you know you’d be in the mood for whatever i made for dinner?

Nate: i can’t make these decisions anymore
thats why i’m getting married
so i don’t have to
my food thinking days are over

If that’s not a reason to get married (to someone you had a “good” date with), I don’t know what is.

Since Nate never has any idea what he wants for dinner, I have to come up with these things myself.

I knew I wanted to use my new panini press, one of my bridal gifts!! I immediately thought of quesadillas and tried to figure out what else was in my fridge.

I had that goat cheese I’ve been meaning to use, plus some Trader Joes Red Pepper Jelly that I haven’t tried yet (courtesy of Nate’s mom). For some reason I knew I wanted roasted corn too, and then I threw in mushrooms to add some more veggies and sauteed shrimp for protein.

Before I knew it, a delicious quesadilla was born.

Since Nate doesn’t mind making me come up with dinner ideas and cooking every day, I didn’t mind hiding some chopped up shrimp, his most hated of foods, into this tasty meal

Had it not been for a small piece of shrimp falling out of these very messy quesadillas, Nate never would have known.

And you know what? He saw it fall out and kept eating. They were THAT GOOD people!

I’m the most indecisive person you’ve ever met. My family and Nate can certainly vouch for that.

I rarely buy things for myself, so when I do you can imagine how long I spend deciding exactly what item I want. I will literally stand in a department store with a blue shirt and a red shirt in each hand, looking back and forth for a good 30 minutes to figure out which one I really want.

I’m not exaggerating.

At restaurants I will agonize over what to order because everything sounds so good and I know I can only get one thing. I usually make the waiter go to everyone else and take my order last just so I have that extra 1 minute to finalize my choice.

It’s like making decisions paralyzes me.

How do you choose what to have??! Well with this recipe you don’t have to. There’s a super dense chocolate layer for the chocoholic in all of us, and then there’s the tangy cheesecake marbeled throughout for those of us cheesecake lovers!

This is not for the faint of heart. If you like serious chocolate desserts than this is for you. Nate could barely finish his slice…although it could be because it was a large slice and we had just had a giant mac and cheese dinner. Man, I wish I had his metabolism…

Proudly wearing my "Bride 2 Be" sash

Anyway, since I haven’t gotten a food post together I thought I’d entertain you with some pictures. This weekend I headed down to Florida to attend a bridal shower my mom’s friends threw for me. It was super nice of them to do this! I’ll be having another shower in NJ in a few months for my friends and family up north.

They played a game where I had to guess Nate’s answers to some questions they had secretly asked him a month ago

Me wearing the ribbon "hat" made by fashioning all gift ribbons into a hat...or in this case making a hat out of a purse I got as part of a present.

My personal favorite: When did Amy know she wanted to marry you?

Nate’s answer: 1 year into the relationship.

Uh…Nate proposed about 1 year and a couple weeks into the relationship. He sure did cut it close!

He also rated our first date on a bad/good/great scale as “good.” Thanks a lot, Nate! He claims it’s because of the food, and not because of the company.

That combined with a few other answers he gave make him very close to sharing the couch with L.C. tonight

Hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what’s been keeping me busy…I promise I’ll be back soon with a yummy Fudgey cheesecake concoction before the next busy weekend (this time with our wedding food-tasting!) begins…

Well, the marathon didn’t go exactly as planned. Monday in Boston ended up being even hotter than predicted and it reached 90 degrees, with very little humidity.

The weather was so hot that the marathon organization did something the’ve never done before: they offered a deferment to the 2013 Boston Marathon for participants who decide not to race.

In addition, they highly recommended that only those who qualified for the marathon should race, i.e. not the charity organization runners because they’re usually not as highly trained. They also stressed that people pay very careful attention to their bodies and stop the second they felt any signs of heat exhaustion or dehydration.

And finally, they kept the finish systems open an additional hour on race day to allow people to run extra slowly so they didn’t hurt themselves.

Basically the only point in running was really to say you ran a marathon (which Nate had no need to do), because no one, not even the elite athletes, could get a personal record on this race.

In the end, Nate decided not to defer. the combination of the fact that Nate had a full fan club (my parents flew in, his aunt took the train down, his mom and I came along) and the fact that he actually worked with a trainer for this race compared to just training on his own for the others made him really not want to wait til next year.

He hydrated a ton but got to mile 8 and just felt like crap so he stopped. A ton of other runners dropped out midway too, including last year’s male winner. The winner this year was a full 10 minutes slower than last years time, so you can imagine what the situation must have been like.

I think for Nate it was a physical plus a mental exhaustion.  It had been a stressful choice just to decide to actually run, but he just didn’t want to hurt himself and ruin every race after because of an injury or bad memories of running.

Nate was definitely bummed by the whole thing and we all felt really bad for him.  I was worrying so much about him before he even left for the race. When I stopped getting text updates about his progress in the race I was silently freaking out. I was SO glad when he had gotten back to the hotel and was able to call me!

I definitely think it was the wisest decision he could have made and I’m so glad he didn’t hurt himself.

We got back yesterday and were all a little drained. I really didn’t want to cook up some extravagant dinner, so I made this really easy meal I saw over on Confessions of a Chocoholic.

I also didn’t feel like dragging out the camera, so I experimented with taking pictures on my new iphone app Camera+. What do you guys think of how the pics came out? Not bad for a camera phone I think.

I very slightly adapted the recipe and made some buttered Pastina to go along with it. Yum!

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Nate will be running the Boston Marathon this coming Monday! I’m so so proud of him. I can’t even run a mile, no less a marathon that you actually have to qualify for.

I highly doubt you need to carbo-load for a full week leading up to any marathon race (since I’m sure most of it gets digested the day after you eat it), but Nate requested that this week be “pasta week,” so that’s what I gave him!

What a cruel joke that the week of Passover (i.e. THE WEEK I CAN’T EAT PASTA) coincided with Nate’s pasta week.

I found this recipe on one of my favorite sites, SeriousEats.com. I find their recipes extremely reliable, and delicious!

I wanted something a little different than our standard rotation of pasta with sausage and red sauce, pesto, or broccoli and garlic. It also continues with my vegetarian theme. Next time I’m going to try soaking dried chickpeas if I have the forethought, rather than using the canned variety.

We’re heading up to Boston on Friday for a relaxing, site-seeing weekend leading up to the actual race.

When Nate gets his best time ever (knock on wood!!!), I will definitely attribute it to this meal that I made him eat all week long, since I only know how to cook enough for an army. Luckily the boy likes leftovers as much as me.

On a side note, please cross your fingers that the weather forecast showing 75 degrees for the race on Monday is totally wrong!

I copied this recipe directly from Serious Eats, so head over there for the recipe! But in case you wanna know what’s in it without having to click on a link, here are the ingredients:

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
3/4 teaspoon Kosher salt, plus more for the pasta water
black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 cup olive oil
1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella, chopped into 1/4-inch pieces
1/2 pound pasta shells
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 cups chopped arugula

But Nate doesn’t eat beef (he doesn’t like the taste), and there are only so many ways to cook a piece of chicken or turkey. Not to mention I DETEST touching raw poultry. I’m totally paranoid about Salmonella and it takes me forever to cut it up and dispose of the infected knife/cutting board and then thoroughly cleanse every surface it might have touched.

So sometimes it’s easier, and spices things up, to just go vegetarian for a meal. I’ve been using a lot of beans lately because they’re just so simple to use (especially when you get them precooked in a can). Not to mention vegetarian sources of protein are much lower in fat than animal sources.

I had seen a recipe for Tamale pie that just had me totally craving something similar, and that’s when it hit me to sub Tempeh for the beef. Now in this case I more than made up for the fat I was saving by adding the cheese and cornbread topping, but that’s neither here nor there

You can crumble it up to get it into similarly sized pieces as ground beef. I’m telling you, a man meat-lover will not even know that it has no meat!

This wasn’t a super spicy version and I think next time I’d add even more mexican spices (or maybe just use a packet of taco seasoning instead of the chili powder/cumin/salt!), but it was still mighty tasty.

I dare you to make this “meaty” meal and see how many people notice there’s no meat involved!

P.S. Please don’t judge this recipe by the photos. I had a hungry man on my hands when this came out of the oven and had to rush.