Dinner @ Dewey's Italian Bistro

I know it's been a while since I've posted a cooking/food post. I've been busy with work and being pregnant has kind of taken my motivation for taking pictures of my cooking and creating new dishes away. I still have been cooking and making some pretty good dishes, I might add, but just haven't had the motivation to post about them. My bad!

Anyway, here's to last Tuesday night's dinner (again, evey intention of posting this LAST week, geez). Ah-may-zing. First off, we all know how much I love pasta. That's a given. I decided to make meatballs. From scratch. I remember watching an episode of Giada at Home on Foodnetwork where she added Parmesan to her noodles and Rachael Ray where she made meatballs and added mozzarella cheese to the middle, so I took that inspiration to make these meatballs with Parmesan cheese. YUM!!

I used fettuccine noodles, a bottled creamy tomato vodka sauce and sage pork sausage for the base. 

I used 1 lb of pork sage sausage for the meatballs. Added about a cup of dried bread crumbs (any kind will do, I used italian seasoned), and about 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese, and a good sprinkle of garlic salt. I was able to make 18 meatballs out of just 1 lb, though the breadcrumbs do help to add consistency. I baked them on a cookie sheet, covered with EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) at 400 F degrees for about 15 minutes. I cut one open to check doneness.

Next, I just cooked the noodles regular and simmered a creamy tomato vodka sauce, out of the bottle. I know, not very creative there, but the meatballs were really my main focus for the meal. Hang with me a second.

After the meatballs were done, I added them to the sauce and let simmer a few more minutes. While this wasn't a difficult dish to make, it had been a long time since we'd had meatballs with spaghetii. Overall, a great and mostly simple dish to make.

Happy Pasta Eating!

Pesto Pasta Dish & Citrus Decor

I've made a return home after being away in Colorado for almost 2 weeks. Sometimes being home feels good, even though you miss where you were and who you were with. So I've been busy planning what to cook this week for dinner. Sunday I made this lovely Pesto Pasta with Chicken dish. However Monday and Tuesday were a no go since I worked evenings and I wasn't up for cooking dinner at 10:30pm. This dish was pretty easy and I just made it up on the go. I was in the mood for pasta, had some chicken and remembered I had a dry pesto mix in the cupboard to use. I love it when it's that easy!

Pasta of choice (I used Cavatappi)
Dry pesto mix (usually in the store in the spice asile)
for the pesto mix you'll need: milk & olive oil (amounts listed on the packet)
Chicken (I had about 2 small chicken breasts)
about 1/3 cup lemon juice
1-2 garlic cloves, smashed & chopped
seasoning for chicken if you want

I started by cooking the pasta and in another pan cooking the pesto sauce. The pesto was super easy to make. Then as the pasta was done, I added the pesto to the pasta and let it sit for a few minutes. In a skillet pan I put about a tablespoon of olive oil and 2 garlic cloves and turned the heat on medium. I sliced the chicken into bite size chunks and just used salt and pepper to season. I kept it pretty simple knowing it was going into a pesto dish. So the chicken cooked for about 5-10 minutes until it turned white and was almost cooked all the way through. I added the lemon juice now just so the chicken could simmer it in a few more minute, about 5, to get the flavor. Then I added the chicken to the pasta and wa-la!

Now here you can dish up your plate and dig in. I decided to try to bake it. Something about baked pasta sounds fancy, maybe?! So I put the dish in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes just to get a crispy topping. I thought it would be good to add some parmsian cheese. Yumm! It was a good idea.

All in all, this was an easy dish with ingredients I had on hand. Of course you can make your own pesto or use a different sauce. It was light and creamy. It doesn't look like much chicken, add more if you like, I didn't have much.

Oh yes, and now the citrus decor. Josh had a great idea to use up our excess Lemons and Oranges. He works in landscape and had come across a lot of lemons. We weren't going to be able to use them all before they went bad. Josh is a genius! He took a string of heavy duty string and threaded it between the sliced lemons and limes. This is so pretty and smelled awesome! The smell has kind of gone away as they dried out, but it is SO PRETTY! And such a festive decor for spring. Very cost effective decor I might add!