Bacon Parmesan Pasta

So, it’s been a really long time since I’ve posted! I have a good reason, I promise.

I’m pregnant!

Yep, hubby and I are expecting our first baby right at the beginning of the new year!

This means that pretty much since the beginning of May, I’ve been pretty uninterested in cooking. This is partly because I haven’t had much energy, particularly at the beginning when I would come home from work, lay down on the couch, and fall asleep to Friends reruns. But it’s also partly because I just haven’t been interested in food.

Let me clarify. I have been very, very interested in food like boxed mac and cheese and good old grilled cheese sandwiches made with American cheese singles and white bread. Really, anything that involved cheese. But nothing that required effort.

Poor hubby has endured lots of meals that are thrown together with a jar of spaghetti sauce, a bag of frozen meatballs, and a box of spaghetti.

In the past week or two (I’m well into my second trimester now), I’ve started to get back into cooking, but so far it’s been things I’ve made and blogged about before.

Until tonight! You are finally getting a new post about something I’ve made!

Of course, it was a meal based almost entirely on the fact that I haven’t been to the grocery store lately and didn’t have much to work with. Work with me.

I present: bacon parmesan pasta!

Start off with a chopped onion. I had less than I wanted, but the only other onion I had was pretty old and soft. So this was it. Sorry for the blurry pic.

Next, I pulled some bacon out of the freezer and thawed it. I’d purchased it when I only needed a few strips for a chicken salad, so the rest was up for grabs.

I tried to chop it up with a big knife, but that didn’t work out so well.

So I used my kitchen shears. This is why I’m always on hubby’s case not to use these as general household scissors….

Toss the bacon in a big pan and start frying it up.

After a little bit, I added the chopped onion and a teaspoon or two of minced garlic.

While it cooked up, I opened a can of artichokes and chopped them.

Back to the bacon, because I like to jump around a lot. I spontaneously added some pure maple syrup to the bacon/ onion/ garlic mixture.

Oh, did I mention I’ve been cooking pasta in another pot? No? Well, I have. Problem is, I assumed that two boxes of Wegman’s brand farfalle pasta would have the same cooking time and combined them, only realizing later that they have two different cooking times. Thanks, Wegman’s. So some of my farfalle was cooked better than other farfalle.

So after the pasta is cooked and drained, I added a bit of olive oil and tossed it until coated.

I didn’t want to drain the bacon and lose all the grease (potential flavoring), so I just used a slotted spoon to transfer the bacon and onions straight to the pasta.

Then I opened a can of diced tomatoes and added some.

Next, I added the artichokes.

Finally, seasonings. Some salt…

Some pepper…

Some Italian seasoning…

And some basil…

After I’d stirred it all up, I poured in a little of the bacon grease to give it flavor and body. Not all of it, just some.

Finally, some grated Parmesan cheese. This really should have been fresh, not the stuff in a green plastic can, but oh well. Like I said, this was made with stuff I had handy.

And since I wasn’t following my recipe too closely, I went back and tweaked ingredients after giving it a taste. I added more tomatoes, etc. Finally, it was ready to eat!

Yum!

Quite tasty. Satisfied the pregnant lady’s obsession with carbs, while also giving hubby plenty of bacon. I liked the sweetness of the maple syrup against the savoriness of everything else (that’s totally not a word, by the way). Not the healthiest thing ever, given how much of the bacon fat went into it, but I’m not counting calories right now and I haven’t gained too much weight to date so I can’t say I care too much. It was yummy and it’ll reheat well.

If you’re interested in the original, there it is. It was fairly basic (didn’t have the maple syrup, tomatoes, artichokes, or seasonings), but it’s a good place to start. It was kind of fun to make the dish my own for once, rather than following a recipe to the letter. Enjoy!

Dinner for Two: Fabulous Lasagna

The great thing about lasagna is that once you’ve gone through the trouble of putting it together, there are tons of leftovers for the next few meals.

The bad part of lasagna is that once you’re sick of eating lasagna every night, the rest sits in the fridge uneaten. It takes two people a long time to eat a full pan of it! But that problem is eliminated with this method!

Now, I’ve got an amazing lasagna recipe that I swear by, but this was just an easier, simpler, less time-consuming version.

Cook up some ground beef…

And boil some lasagna noodles.

When the beef is browned, drain out the grease and add jarred sauce. I used Wegman’s Italian Classics, one jar of Roasted Garlic and one jar of Grandpa’s Sauce.

Next, prepare your cheese. Some ricotta,

an egg,

and some basil, thyme, garlic powder, and oregano.

All mixed up!

Drain your noodles, let them cool, and then begin assembling.

Start with a little sauce in the bottom of some disposable foil loaf pans.

Then add a noodle to each (I had to cut about 2 inches off the end of each with a pair of kitchen shears).

Ooops, just remembered to add mozzarella to the cheese!

Stir that in, then spread a bit on each noodle.

More sauce…

Lather, rinse, repeat. I think I had 4 noodles in each pan at the end.

Top with some more shredded mozzarella, and you’re good to go!

I covered each with foil. Two were set aside to freeze, and the other two went into the oven.

After about 25 minutes in the oven, this is what one looked like!

Very yummy. A little more time intensive than I’d like for a weeknight, but I guess it’s worth it since it’ll save me the work on another night.

Birthday Bang Bang Shrimp!

We lived around the corner from a chain restaurant called Bonefish Grill for almost two years before checking it out.

Hubby isn’t a big fish fan, and their logo (a fish skeleton) really is a terrible design because it doesn’t inspire thoughts of anything remotely appetizing.

But I had heard positive reviews from friends, and also their commercials made them sound pretty good, so we finally went just over a year ago. We liked it enough that we went back soon afterwards for my birthday dinner. This time, we tried their famous appetizer, bang bang shrimp. It was divine.

We’ve gone occasionally since then, but not often. We miss it terribly, mainly because of the bang bang shrimp.

Which is why the next part of my story is romantic, thoughtful, and just plain awesome.

My birthday was a few days ago. I think it was late morning when hubby casually asked, via gchat, what time I intended to leave work. I responded, “Around 4.”

He asked if I had any thoughts about dinner, and I replied that my only thought was that I didn’t intend to spend all evening cooking. I was willing to do something simple, given that we had plans to celebrate at a restaurant that weekend, but I didn’t want to spend much effort on it. He agreed that this sounded reasonable, and left it at that.

I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment complex around 4, about a half hour earlier than expected. Hubby’s car was inexplicably already there, though he normally wouldn’t be home until after 5, so a big grin spread across my face as I realized that he had a birthday surprise in mind. It made me think of the time I’d gone into school a bit early on my 15th birthday and found my friend in the middle of decorating my locker.

When I entered the apartment a minute later, I found cheesecake swirl brownies cooling, alfredo sauce being thickened, and a big bowl of raw shrimp being prepped. In addition to making shrimp fettucini alfredo, hubby was using a copycat recipe to make bang bang shrimp!

I don’t normally blog stuff he makes, but I felt that I needed to this time. Please excuse my less-than-awesome pictures. I was trying to stay out of the way.

He started by making a sauce with mayo, Thai sweet chili sauce, and sriracha hot chili sauce (more than the recipe called for, because it seemed to need it).

Next, he dredged raw shrimp in cornstarch.

After heating up some vegetable oil, he lightly fried them in small batches.

He drained them all on a plate lined with paper towels, just like with bacon.

Presentation is simple. In a dish, place some lettuce. I didn’t take pictures of that, sorry. But then place the shrimp on the lettuce and drizzle on the sauce. Or toss the shrimp in the sauce before putting them in the dish, as we did, just to make sure they’re evenly coated.

We’d already eaten a few before we remembered to sprinkle on some chopped scallions. So we did that.

So…. this was pretty much the best thing ever.

It was so romantic that hubby left work early, went to Wegman’s for ingredients, and was cooking this when I got home.

We both ate a full half pound of shrimp before taking a break and tackling some of the fettucini that he’d made. So much food, but so yummy. Hey, I only turn 29 once a year. The shrimp had such a nice texture, crispy yet soft and covered in the warm, creamy sauce. And the sauce was both sweet and tangy. Oh so good.

If you’re interested, here's the copycat recipe that he used.