hi guys! This recipe was so much fun to work on. I was challenged to create a fusion dish with flavors inspired by Latin and Italian cuisine so I decided to make a slightly spicy penne pasta tossed with chorizo and Alfredo sauce topped with fresh Parmesan, diced tomatoes and cilantro. Chorizo meat as well as cilantro are both ingredients that get a lot of love in traditional Latin dishes while Alfredo sauce, Parmesan cheese, and roma tomatoes are often found in Italian dishes. The flavor combination here is SO good y'all. Just make sure you give this dish a try when you're planning on having a cheat meal, ha!  I mean we all deserve to splurge a little (or a lot) right?! Oh, and did I mention that this whole dish is prepared using  one pan? Little dishes with lots of flavor is a winner in my household! I hope y'all enjoy this dish as much as we did! 

Easy weeknight meals are the best, am I right?! Especially ones that taste like a delicious box of pasta-roni but are fresh, not from a box, and take you the same amount of time to make. Thanks to my new friends over @ Pop & Cook that is! Seriously guys, this company is my new easy weeknight best friend. They make frozen cubes of fresh herbs, minced garlic, and glazed onions that you can just pop out of a tray right into your recipe making adding some fresh & healthy flavor SO much easier! Not only that but using their cubes means less dishes (no chopping or pulling out the cutting board for you) AND less waste, because if you only need 1 garlic clove per week, you can use just that! 

No exaggeration this may be my favorite dish I have ever made. I make a lot of simple recipes here, because well for the most part that is what I make. I'm busy working full time, trying to maintain my relationship, social life, taking care of my pups, keeping up with this blog, and trying to get some down time here and there... so decadent dishes are few and far between at home, but that doesn't mean I don't absolutely love them. When I go out to eat I am all about the "foodie" items on the menu, mixing flavors, fancy dishes, you get the drill. I love sharing my day to day recipes because that is what a lot of you like to make as well, I know I'm not the only busy one, but every now and then you need to treat. yo. self. 

This recipe is the product of another month participating in a recipe swap club, this month I recreated and adapted this recipe from Don't Give A Fork, a blog by Payal out of Mumbai, India. I truly adore working from her recipes as they are so packed with flavors and inspiration from different cultures, and this one was no different. Al dente noodles tossed with olive oil and spinach, topped with a pan roasted cauliflower and vegetable mix, topped with a a Parmesan onion cream sauce and chili flakes. ​While all the ingredients were so simple they weren't something I would have thought to combine in a pasta dish so thank you to Payal because this was freaking amazing! 

I am so excited to share this recipe and post with y'all for so many reasons. The first being this is the first post I have done in over a month (yikes)! Over the last month I celebrated my birthday and moved into a new house with my boyfriend so pretty much every weekend has been non-stop packing, unpacking, decorating, and sneaking away from all that to explore our new neighborhood restaurants. I love to go out and try new spots as much as I love to cook and get creative at home! On top of checking out the new restaurants I've also been checking out all my new local spots to shop and feel like I found a total gem in Grocery Outlet. I had one of those I can't believe I've been missing out on this my whole life kind of moments so I'm excited to share that with you as well! 

hi y'all! I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season. I know I am- this is my favorite time of the year! The only downside is my schedule gets so crazy I don't have nearly as much time to cook and blog as I would like to so I'm so excited to finally be getting this recipe up for y'all. As you may have seen from previous posts I participate  in a monthly recipe swap club where I select another blogger's recipe to try out and share with all of you. I'm having so much fun being a part of this club as I get to expand my network and share extra recipes with you that I may not have thought of myself! This month I worked from Mom Noms blog. I truly loved reading through mom noms because fun fact: she is also a bay area based foodie! Hey neighbor! I had a hard time selecting what I wanted to make but I eventually landed on her bacon mac & cheese recipe because let's get real, I could always use more bacon and cheese in my life. 

Hi y'all! I am so excited to share this recipe with you. The last couple weeks have been busy to say the least. Working in retail merchandising the weeks leading up to black Friday & cyber Monday can get a little hectic, and on top of that I spent last weekend in Dallas visiting some friends and lots of quality time with family over Thanksgiving. Now that my schedule is dying down (for a few days) I have a few great recipes to share with y'all starting with this amazing spaghetti aglio e olio. As some of you may know I am part of a recipe swap club in a food blog community where each month I am tasked someone else's site and choose a recipe to recreate and share with all of you! I absolutely love this idea as it challenges me to make something different and share recipes with you I may not otherwise think of. This month I worked from the Don't Give A Fork blog and chose to make their Spaghetti Aglio E Olio and I am SO glad I did. The ingredients are so simple and light yet the end result is so full of flavor! This was my first time making, or even tasting, aglio e olio and I am instantly hooked! I made a few tweaks along the way to keep the recipe nice and simple, but if you want to see the full original recipe I encourage you to check it out! 

I am so excited about this recipe for a couple reasons. I joined a food bloggers recipe swap club where every month I will be making a recipe of my choice from a fellow food bloggers page and sharing it with all of you. I love this idea and am already so excited about this club not only because I get to network with other foodies but it challenges me to make something I may not have thought of! This month I was assigned The Olive Blogger and because it's fall and I was feeling festive and cozy this weekend I chose to try their Butternut Squash Risotto recipe. I'm so glad this was my pick because it was seriously amazing - like I can't wait to make it for guests, new fall staple recipe amazing. 

Oh. My. Yum. I'm a big fan of zoodles, mainly because I'm a big fan of pasta but not a big fan of the calories I'd be consuming if I ate pasta every time I craved it. Which would be a lot. I especially loved this zoodle recipe, It was so inexpensive, filling, healthy, and did I mention on the table within 20 minutes? Most other zoodle recipes I've made have been delicious but either end up not being satisfying enough leaving me hungry an hour later, or too calorie packed because they're loaded with creamy sauce or fattier meat. The lean turkey is so perfect in this recipe because it's such healthy filling protein and once mixed in with marinara you can't even tell it's turkey over beef. It also completely overpowers the texture of the zucchini and just feels like soft pasta with meat sauce. I also loved how quickly I could make this recipe from start to end. I've had a lot of later evenings at the office lately and I know all of you with busy schedules understand my appreciation for a really quick but homemade meal. Anyway, I'll stop ranting about why I loved this recipe so much and let you get to it!