Cooking with Leftovers: Rotisserie Chicken

Mike and I bought a rotisserie chicken for me to eat with my spinach pasta and with a promise that he would eat some as well so we didn't waste half of the chicken. As the week progressed, it became evident that we were not going to finish the whole bird. With that in mind, I shredded the remaining breast and leg then swung by Central Market and picked up a can of hatch chile enchilada sauce (red), yellow corn tortillas and a small container of chihuahua cheese (you could use whatever you like, this just looked interesting). One small assembly line and about 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven later and this is what we had:

Our leftover chicken + minimal ingredients made 6 enchiladas. Fast, easy and delish!

Mascarpone Cupcakes!

These mascarpone cupcakes just might be my favorite cupcakes. They are of course, a Giada recipe. The texture is really light, sort of like angel food cake but has so much more flavor and smells REALLY good. The strawberry icing is just up my alley since I do not like chocolate or things that are super sweet.

Mike's mom came into town to take our engagement pictures and wanted to try this recipe after seeing it in one of the cookbooks I had laying around. Mike loves them so I decided to surprise him and bake them before he got home from work.

The only bad thing about the cupcakes is that I'm tempted to eat every single one!

Cooking with Leftovers: Baby Spinach

I love baby spinach... there are so many things you can add this to... a sandwich, salad, quesadilla filling, lasagna filling etc. However, the bag only comes in one size, giant. Therefore, I'm constantly stuck with half a bag of leftover baby spinach that inevitably goes bad before I can use it. This issue came up again last week when I made chicken, mushroom and spinach quesadillas for my weeknight dinners. I had to use up a good amount of spinach before it went bad so I tried this Giada recipe, penne with spinach sauce.

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe... I can't really get on board with whole wheat pasta so I used Ronzoni Smart Pasta instead. I also substituted feta for goat cheese, reduced the amount by half and used no-fat cream cheese.

The pasta turned out really good! Its good warm or cold. I'm having it this week with some garlic-herb chicken!