Bribery Dinner

I was craving something hot for breakfast but knowing I had a large carberific dinner planned I didn’t want to go for the usual toast or oats…so settled on rolling up some TJ’s almond butter and half of a banana in an ancient grains tortilla.  Coffee warmed me up anyway.

During what would normally be my gym time I managed to conquer two loads of laundry, grocery shopping, and a quickie lunch.  Last night I made up a 1/2 batch of Lemon Dilly Dip which I used for dipping veggies and rice crackers.

Because there was no protein in that meal snack I was still hungry 20 minutes later so grabbed a bar from my stash. This Clif Mojo bar cured my hunger and my sweet tooth both at once.

After investigating the ingredients of this bar I think I could recreate it pretty easily at home. The recipe would stem from my Sticky Bars and include broken pretzels, pumpkin seeds, rice cereal, raisins, peanuts, and of course chocolate chips! 

Tonight I had the opportunity to guinnea pig a friend other than Tiffaney for dinner.  I’m pretty sure she’s the only person I’ve cooked for since I moved back to town….whoooops. Since he did such a lovely job installing my chandelier I’m buttering up my friend Ray for more handy work around my apartment. 

What?  That deadbolt isn’t going to install itself you know!

Oh wait, I didn’t tell him about that.  Hmmmmmm.

Anyway, I had grand ideas of tackling something big like my Great Aunt Gloria’s spaghetti and meatballs but since that actually serves about 20 people I reeled things in and decided to test out one of the recipes from the current (Feb) issue of Chatelaine….Ravioli Tortellini Lasagna with Sausage & Mushrooms.

The ingredients were simple, the prep looked easy enough, and it was definitely going to leave me leftovers to pop in my freezer.  Sounded good to me!

I opted to use fresh oregano as opposed to the dried in the recipe, swapped tortellini in for the ravioli, and chose hot Italian sausage (the recipe didn’t specify).

Unintentionally I actually only used half of the called for pasta.  I didn’t note the size of the pasta package in the recipe and bought the smaller one. In our opinion more pasta would have made it too dry…the sauce to pasta ratio in my version was pretty much perfect.

Prep was indeed easy and all I had to do when Ray arrived was pop the dish into the oven for 20 minutes.  It cooked up like a dream and I added 3 minutes under the broiler to brown up the cheese.

To go with the cheesey, carby goodness I made a simple salad of red leaf lettuce, grape tomatoes, yellow peppers, and homemade dressing…

Equal parts Dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, and honey, with a generous sprinkle of salt, pepper, Italian seasoning, and fresh oregano…topped with two parts olive oil.  Shake and refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving.

And what pasta meal isn’t complete with bread?  Right, carbs on top of carbs.  I bought this beautiful focaccia from the Italian Bakery down the street…

And we dipped it in a little concoction made from this bread dip mix, olive oil and a weeeee bit of balsamic.

Because I’m a dunderhead and I’m obviously out of practice having guests for dinner I didn’t think to get wine to go with the meal so we shared this Dogfish Head beer I still had from my housewarming party.  It didn’t really compliment the pasta flavours but on it’s own it was interesting and quite delicious.

I thought the recipe turned out well and took credit for the recipe being good because of my changes.  Obviously it totally wouldn’t have been as awesome if I’d used dried oregano. *eye roll*  I guess we’ll know if Ray liked it if I end up with that new deadbolt installed. :)