home cooked italian. yum

I have been lazy with updating my blog, oops! But last week I made lasagna from scratch and it was so great. Lasagna is one of my favorite comfort foods and it is so easy to make! What I love so much about lasagna is that it is no boring pasta dish. It has the potential to have so much flavor when made well with high quality ingredients.

I wish I had a better camera to take pictures of my food with (I use my camera phone), but you will just have to trust me when I say that this lasagna, while not pretty, tasted awesome.

I made the lasagna with a combination of ground beef and breakfast sausage, which I found to be a main reason why the dish had so much flavor. In addition, instead of ricotta cheese I used cottage cheese which ended up making the dish a little more salty and rich with flavor. I served the lasagna with garlic bread and a caesar salad, and everything was topped with my favorite cheese of all, parmigiano reggiano.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies with Cream Cheese frosting

I don't usually bake for two reasons:

1) Baking scares me.  All steps in baking usually require complete accuracy for the final product to be at all delicious.

2) If I were lucky enough to have the final product come out well, I would most likely eat it all in one sitting.

I decided to try out baking last night for fun anyway, and I am so glad I did because these whoopie pies came out perfectly and are IRRESISTIBLE! Thankfully, I have my wonderful boyfriend to keep me from eating all of them in one sitting.:)

These whoopie pies are so divine. They are about the size of your palm so this is not a dessert for someone only wanting a taste of something sweet, this is a dessert for the real sweet tooths out there like me! When you pick the pies up, they smell like a perfect mix of rich cocoa and cream cheese frosting. And when you bite into them, it is like you are biting into a chocolate cloud of happiness with cream cheese frosting rain. They are so good. Maybe I will sneak one right now while Casey isn't looking..:)

Pasta and Chicken bake

Last night for dinner I made a yummy chicken and pasta bake. It was really delicious and super easy!  It would definitely be a crowd pleaser for any taste buds, especially kids. It really reminded me of a homemade gourmet hamburger (or in this case chicken) helper meal. I made the bake with campanelle pasta, stir fried chicken and white onion, garlic, diced tomatoes, mozzarella, and fresh parsley. I mixed all of the ingredients together and placed them in a casserole dish. Then I topped the dish off with a mixture of bread crumbs and parmigiano reggiano. Finally, I added little bits of butter over the top before placing it in the oven to bake (this helped the dish brown beautifully).