Ambitious Deliciousness – Dont Eat Lazy.

One of the challenges of having a food blog is coming up with new recipes to write about. Thankfully, I don’t think I’ll ever run out of ideas, due to the number of bloggers who continue to inspire me with their cooking. As I was contemplating what to make for Mother’s Day, I consulted my ever-growing list of recipes that I had saved.

Lucky for me, I had bookmarked is from Chef Julie Yoon, whose blog consists of delicious recipes and photos. I love seeing pictures of her cooking lessons, because I’d like to try hosting classes one day, when I’m all grown up and have some more kitchen space (whichever comes first).

My Mother’s Day dinner menu started with shrimp cocktail with cocktail sauce, followed by chicken marsala (recipe to come) and orzo salad as the side dish. As a last minute dessert, we grabbed some banana cream pie – random, yes, but nobody complained.

(more…)

If you’re anything like me, you probably subscribe to a lot of food blogs. Interestingly, in the last two weeks, I felt like I entered this alternative universe where “ramps” were in every recipe I came across! Ramps are a member of the onion family,  also known as wild leek, or spring onion.

What’s so special about ramps? Why did it make food bloggers go gaga? Could all of these people be wrong?

According to this article in Time magazine:

“What makes ramps ramps is not their flavor, you see, but their cultural value. The Food Snob’s Dictionary, offers this explanation to Time: “The ramp is not a salad green, but it is a green vegetable, and it is the first legitimately green thing that appears from the ground in April, a month that, in terms of farm yield, is otherwise an extension of winter. For food snobs, therefore, David Kamp, the author of ramps are overcelebrated and overly scrutinized, like the first ballgame played in April, even with 161 more games ahead.”

So what did I think of them? Read below to find out.

(more…)

This classic Italian dish made of bacon, cheese and parsley was so scrumptious that I was really, genuinely sad when I was done and even wanted to eat it again the day after. I paired this pasta dish with arugula from my CSA share this week with some sweet, crunchy, seedless watermelon.

One thing to note – it’s important to time everything so that the sauce and the pasta are ready around the same time, as the heat from the pasta will help to cook the eggs. The water boiled too quickly for me, so I am suggesting that you start the sauce first, then make the pasta second.

A special shoutout to my cousins, who visited all the way from VA  One of them did a great job helping me wash the arugula and dice the parsley, while the other did an even better job of helping by eating!

(more…)