Green Dinner

Matt and I are getting excited with our summer plans!  The closest thing coming up for us is a weekend trip to Packwood, WA to spend the weekend with Santana in a little cabin-type lodgey thing, do some hiking, and visit Olympia on our way home.  SO excited for this.  I want to make some fun meals there on the stovetop in the place we’re staying, so my mind is racing with easy to transport ingredients that can be made into yummy meals.  Any suggestions??

To use some spinach and broccoli from our CSA box this week, we went super green for Wednesday’s dinner.  It was a pretty heavy dinner, but we both went pretty light on lunch this week, so I’m ok with that.

Spinach Alfredo

• 8oz fettuccini
• 1 Tb butter
• 1 cup half and half
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 1 bunch spinach, washed and roughly chopped
• Grated Parmesan

1. Cook pasta according to package directions (Fettuccini takes about 10-12 min)
2. While the pasta cooks, melt butter over medium-high heat and add half and half.  Let this cook for a few minutes until it starts to thicken a little.
3. Season with S&P and add Spinach to cook down for about 1 minute.
4. Blend! We used our stick blender, but you could use a regular blender, or you could leave it rough chopped.
5. Cook down for a few more minutes.
6. Add cheese! (I admit, I went WAY overboard with the cheese, so our sauce was crazy thick)

That’s it! Super easy!  It wasn’t the prettiest thing I’ve ever made, but it was really really easy and super tasty.  We had a french baguette that I sliced a couple pieces from.  Toasted them, rubbed with a clove of garlic, added a tiny bit of pepper and a sprinkle of parm (this was before I overdid it on the sauce). The thick thick thick spinach alfredo was too thick for dipping, but it made an AMAZING spread on the toasty baguette.  I had visions of tiny bites of toasted bread topped with my spinach alfredo spread for an appetizer…maybe with a bite of good fresh tomato sauce. Mmmm….

We served it with Broccoli Balsamico…a recipe that was basically steamed broccoli with a glaze made of balsamic vinegar, garlic, olive oil, grated ginger, brown sugar, salt and pepper.  We made the sauce and then didn’t have the right amount of broccoli, so it got a little soggy/overcooked…but it was still yummy and I may try a similar mix in the future (I usually just go with garlic and balsamic for my broccoli).  I have a huge problem getting broccoli to be as wonderfully cooked as some restaurants get it…especially when I want it lightly glazed with a sauce or something.  The florets always get banged apart or overcooked…or some other tragedy comes to pass.  It really makes me grumpy at the time, but I always eat it up….LOVE broccoli.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 18th, 2009 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Fun, Life, Matthew, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.