Fresh Egg Pasta with Tomato, Basil and Garlic Sauce-Fresh Pasta Tutorial Included

Don't you just want to dive into that?

I think I have marinara sauce in my veins. There are few things in this world that can make me as weak in the knees as the combination of tomato, garlic, basil and a delicious Italian cheese. I grew up in New England, raised on the cooking and baking of some very skilled Italian aunts and a mother who makes a killer sauce and meatballs. My dear Italian Nona, bless her heart, seems to have passed all of the cooking genes down a few generations and failed to keep any for herself. I'm grateful for this marinara flowing through my veins and for the torrid love affair I have had for the past few years with learning the basics of Italian cooking.

I haven't been to Italy (keep in mind that my dream vacation is eating my way through Europe with my best friend), but I think culinary curing in the Boston/New York/New Jersey area is the second best thing. I have dreams of  melt-in-your-mouth fresh zeppole, made in front of you at the local Catholic Italian Church feast. I fantasize about perfectly pounded and fried chicken parmigiana, or pizza with a crust so thin that you can cook it in five minutes flat. Someday, I will go to my ancestral homeland and come back 30 pounds heavier, stuffed with mozzarella and polenta and San Marzano tomatoes and fresh pasta. For now, I will be as authentic as I can in my little kitchen in the Salt Lake Valley.

My mother is an angel, and for my birthday last month, sent me a hand-crank pasta machine, complete with a beautiful Cook's Illustrated pasta cookbook and ravioli mold. Aren't they beautiful? I love my husband, but if this pasta machine asked me to run away with it and live on a white, sandy beach, I might consider it.

Garlic Parmigiana Butter Breadsticks

I love bread. I don't care who knows. There are few things I love more than warm, soft bread. Bread is sexy. Bread is delicious. The ancient Egyptians used the same word for bread as they used for life-"aish." Yeah, I get that. Dang, those Egyptians were smart. You never know when a career as a history teacher will have some practical application! Normally, I am a whole-grain bread girl. I love the nutty complexities of whole wheat, barley, spelt, rye. But every so often, you just want a tender, white bread. Not Wonder Bread, but homemade, tender, melt-in-your-mouth, make your husband hug you from behind while you are kneading, kind of bread. So today, to go with my Fire Roasted Tomato Kale and Spicy Italian Sausage soup, I made these beautiful, seductive Garlic Parmigiana Butter Breadsticks. I adapted this recipe from Brooke over at Cheeky Kitchen. You can check out her original post, but I have my tweaks incorporated in this post.

This is NOT a healthy post. Turn around if you are looking for one. But I do encourage you to adopt the following philosophy-if you are going to eat something like this, make it yourself. You will know exactly what you are eating, and you won't be consuming nasty preservatives (I have always wondered how something as simple as bread ends up with 15 ingredients in it on the packaging!). Ok, 'nuff said. I love these breadsticks.

Fire Roasted Tomato Kale Soup with Italian Sausage

Sometimes the only cure for a nasty cold is a warm bowl of soup. I love me some good chicken noodle, but the lack of grocery shopping this week (yet another side effect of this blasted cold) resulted in a new soup creation based on available ingredients. It only took a half hour, and is it stinkin' delicious. I want to make 10 pots of this deliciousness and run down the streets of our neighborhood singing and dishing out hot bowls of this soup, like I am in a Disney movie. Okay, that's just the cold medicine talking. But make this soup and you will see what I am talking about. It is heaven. In your mouth. Throw in a soft, buttery breadstick, and you will swear you have died and gone to the great beyond. Just a heads up-the breadsticks are a shameless indulgence. White flour and butter. But man, are they delicious. Just enjoy it and have a better day tomorrow.

A quick note-this soup is packed with kale. I don't know if you like kale, or have ever even tried it, but kale is a superfood. It is loaded with essential nutrients, and it is delicious. I am a New England girl at heart, and we ate kale all the time, especially in savory soups on cold winter days, steam rising out of the bowl as our breath fogged up cold windowpanes. It was very Robert Frost and Norman Rockwell. So trust me, and use the kale.

Ok...here we go. I don't have as many pictures for this post as I usually do. A lot of my ingredients were pre-prepped and in the freezer. But the result will still taste good-I promise!

Sweet Pepper Chicken with Whole Wheat Penne and Roasted Garlic Asparagus

My favorite part of leaving winter behind is the explosion of color in my fresh produce options. Suddenly, my kitchen transforms into a rainbow of delicious possibility, and the dreary days of winter and dull, lifeless food seem to fly out the window. This dish is a celebration of colorful rainbows of culinary possibility. Oh, and it's super easy, super healthy, and a great way to get your vitamins in for the day.

Prepare your palate for a delicious treat of Sweet Pepper Chicken with Whole Wheat Penne and Roasted Garlic Asparagus.  We ate this with a crisp spinach salad and savored every bite!   

Let me say-I have always hated peppers. I remember being served stuffed green peppers as a child and hated them, and I think my aversion comes from that. I have learned to like red and yellow bell peppers, but my world was literally rocked a few weeks ago when I had my first sweet baby pepper. It was like eating vegetable candy, and I have been hooked every since. This simple dish was a great chance to allow some chicken to absorb the sweet, succulent flavor of these peppers. The green onions added another flavor dimension and really bumped this dish up to a 10 for me. The asparagus was a deliciously simple pleasure, and the addition of a nutrient-rich spinach salad rounds this out and makes it both healthy and delicious.