Fall!

We are having our first taste of fall! The weather over the past few days has been such a nice break from the summer heat. We have been enjoying it by taking walks around the lake. This morning the temperature in my car read 58 degrees!

And, this weekend I made my first "fall" dish, southwestern chicken chili. No photos to post but it was really tasty! Somewhat healthy for chili... chicken, chicken broth, dark and light red beans, onions/garlic and spices (chili, cumin, fennel seeds) cooked until thick served with cornbread and green salad. Next time I will definately add some sort of pepper for heat. Stay tuned over the coming weeks/months for stories of other cool-weather dishes including gumbo (a favorite) and soups (a challenge I hope to overcome this season!).

Spaghetti & Mozzarella Stuffed Meatballs

Last week I took these ingredients...


combined them and rolled them into meatballs stuffed with a little ball of mozzarella...


and ended up with this!


This quickly got a thumbs up from Mike. I don't know if I am a huge fan of the mozzarella in the center but they tasted good anyway! I also made the marinara sauce at home (very simple recipe of crushed tomatoes, onions, garlic and spices).

Penne with Steak and Spinach

I haven't been very good at blogging about my kitchen adventures but as you can probably tell by the name of my blog... I really like to cook and bake!

I got inspired by a Giada De Laurentiis recipe for penne with beef and arugula. I made it tonight with a couple of changes including swapping out arugula for spinach and sauteing it with garlic before tossing in the pasta. The dish came out pretty tasty for a first try. I think the recipe calls for too much dressing so I left half of it out. I served it with grilled steak and crusty french bread. Here's the end result:

Penne with sauteed spinach...

and topped with steak.