It's Good to Be Back Again

Hello,
It's hard to believe it, but that last time I blogged was over two years ago....
Good golly. I never intended to stop blogging! It just kind of happened, obviously.

Writing out & recording my life in little snippets here are there on my blog definitely was something I enjoyed greatly. And lately, I've been trying to get back into doing those things that brought me so much joy. Namely:

• reading (real books, not my Kindle)
• art (drawing, painting, etc.)
• sewing & knitting 
• gardening (I'm limited because I live in town now, but thankfully I have a deck and some great windowsills)
• cooking (there is literally  nothing  as tasty as a gourmet home-cooked meal)
• blogging 

I'm slowly, but surely, reincorporating these hobbies back into my life, and boy. Does it feel good. I feels like riding a bike after a long time. (Which I had the chance to do on Saturday, for the first time in years? months? Nothing feels as wonderful as gliding down the road with the wind whipping you hair and sun kissing your skin!) 

This evening, I decided against going out and eating fast food again (even though I was starving & impatient) and opted instead to head over to our local grocery for supplies. I usually like to go into the grocery store with a list in hand (the idea is, if it's not on my list I won't be tempted to buy it, ha ha...) but today I just strolled through the aisles looking for healthy, more paleo, non-dairy & gluten free options. Thankfully Giant has so many of those! I ended up getting: fresh broccoli, plums, limes, carrots, cucumbers, baby bella mushrooms, soft & hard tofu, OJ, almond milk, organic sausage, lasagna, and non-dairy sour cream. Looking back I realize I should have gotten tomatoes, but I forgot.

So for dinner tonight (9:30pm, which is much later than I like to eat but whatever) I decided to recreate a dish I had a TGIFriday's a while back. It was some kind of pasta with mushrooms, spinach and capers in it. Extremely delicious and very fresh tasting, with a zing to it (lemon juice?) I ended up calling my local TGIFridays and asking what the dish was. Turns out, they did have that dish, it was called Chicken Piccatta Pasta but they no longer serve it. Bummer!  Oh well, I made my own version anyway, and it was darn near just as good. :) 

Hannah's Chicken Piccata Linguine with Creamed Spinach

Literally the most delicious dish I've eaten in a while!

Anyway, so if you want to recreate this for yourself, I took the time to jot down what I did.

Ingredients:

capers

lemon juice (or lemons, even better)

garlic (fresh, or minced from a jar)

mushrooms (I used baby portabellas)

fresh tomatoes (I used Italian diced tomatoes from a can)

non-dairy sour cream

butter

olive oil

whole grain linguine

chicken, cut into strips  (I used frozen chicken meatballs, which my mom makes - they're amazing!)

 Obviously, you want to start with boiling the pasta. I add a pinch of salt and a spoonful of olive oil to the water. Whole grain pasta takes a lot longer to boil, FYI.

As that's boiling, go ahead and add more olive oil to a pan, and sear/saute the piece ingredients in this order: chicken (to fully cooked temps) > garlic > mushrooms > capers 

While cooking that, I microwaved my SteamFresh creamed spinach steamer bag.

Once those are cooked, add the tomatoes and sour cream, with a few squirts of lemon juice. I had to simmer this for a good 5-7 mins to get it to the consistency I wanted as a sauce.

 Pasta drained and more olive oil added to keep it fresh, sauce done, spinach cooked -  now you can assemble the ingredients!  Pasta first, twisted into a circle. Sauce added on top (as much or as little liquid as you like!) Spinach last, spooned on the side.

Basically, my roommate and I devoured this inside of 15mins, it's delectable! And it really only took 30 mins to make! Proof that healthy delicious food is indeed possible on a budget and with normal adult time constraints.

Well, that's all I've got for now. :) It's good to be back.

Enjoy. ~