Bon appétit!

So here it goes...my first food blog.  Hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed doing it :)

Tuesday night's dinner consisted of recipes selected from smittenkitchen.com... I am obsessed with this blog, and anyone else who loves cooking like I do will become obsessed as well.  It's a woman in NYC who blogs about her cooking.  She is also a photographer, and she takes pictures of everything she makes.  Her pictures are AMAZING.  Every day is a new recipe and they are simple, practical, and so fun. Oh, and all of her recipes are archived and categorized... since 2006.  Like I said, obsessed.

Thank you, smittenkitchen, for the inspiration for my Tuesday night dinner.  This cooking/ picture taking/ blogging about it will definitely become more frequent.

Tuesday night dinner: (recipes for the pasta and cookies are in parentheses)

• penne a la vodka  (penne à la vodka + belgian brownies )
• vegetable foccacia bread
• baked zucchini and squash
• salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies (crisp salted oatmeal white chocolate cookies )
• cabernet sauvignon

*note: these recipes are healthy for the soul.  That's about it.

I'm going to post my pictures from the evening, although they do not even compare to the quality of smittenkitchen.

To start off, I baked the cookies.  They took me less than 10 minutes to prepare and are officially my favorite cookies I have ever made.  I have 2 dozen if anybody would like to take some off my hands :) The sea salt on top adds the perfect touch.  I'm posting the before and after pictures of each item.

Next, I made the vegetable foccacia bread.  I found this recipe elsewhere but have adapted it so much over time that it's hardly the recipe I initially found.  It's fool proof and you can do just about anything you want with it.  (Erin, I made this before with you but tweaked it just a little bit more this time).  The name fools you, but I actually used asiago bread instead of foccacia.  I cut the round crust off the top to leave a flat surface.  I then cut and sautéed 1 sweet red pepper, 1medium zucchini, and 1 yellow pepper.  Sprinkled the top of the bread with olive oil and garlic salt, topped the bread with the sautéed veggies, sprinkled parmesan cheese, basil (fresh), and parsley(fresh) on top, then salted and peppered to taste.  Baked at 500 degrees for 6-8 minutes.  Sliced into wedges...perfecto.

Now the baked zucchini and squash, I'm proud to say, is my own little recipe.  I know, I know.... not much to it.  But I still like to think I invented it :) I'd also like to say that this is Tad's absolute favorite thing I make, and we have it about 2-3 times a week.  It's so easy and delicious.  I usually cut up 1-2 squash and 1-2 zucchini (depending on how many you're serving) into coin slices.  Douse them with olive oil and Carolina Seasoning (Thanks, dad... this stuff is amazing), bake them at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until completely soggy.  Sounds gross, but the less crunchiness of the veggies, the more delicious.  (Like I said earlier... healthy for the soul). I'm sorry to say, I forgot to take a picture of the after picture.

Next up: the main course.  This pasta is again probably my favorite pasta I have ever made.  fool proof, takes MAX 15 minutes to make, and just utterly scrumptious.

I truly don't think I've had this much fun in a long time.  I'll never be able to trump smittenkitchen, but I can certainly have fun trying.