Naturally Green St. Patrick's Day Cupcakes

Having a sensitivity to food coloring confuses people sometimes, especially since mine is restricted to blue. What they don't seem to understand is that my body doesn't actually care if it looks blue, just if it contains the pigment Blue 1. You know what else contains Blue 1 besides blue food coloring? Green food coloring. Purple food coloring. A variety of foods that don't fall anywhere on the blue side of the color wheel, also known as my list of reasons I hate everything (because I usually discover these foods contain blue food coloring the hard way).

Reasons I Hate Everything List

• Store bought marshmallows (even the gingerbread ones)
• Cranberry ginger ale (ironically bought to make my stomach feel better)
• Chocolate animal crackers
• Peach Mango Crystal Lite
• Reese's Pieces
• Almost anything berry flavored

There's probably more, but since I've become obsessive about checking the ingredients on foods before I buy them, there's a lot less accidental blue food coloring ingestion, so I'm less angry about it. That's not to say I never slip up (sometimes on purpose, damn you sour gummy worms), but since my system has usually been cleaned out of all blue by that time, it's usually less "I hate everything" and more "well, that was not smart."

But when this time of year rolls around, and everyone decides to dye everything green, the subject starts to come up again. Well I tell someone I can't eat something that has green food coloring, they go, "Why, it's not blue," and I have to go back to the elementary school color wheel to explain how you make something green.

Enter the naturally green cupcakes. I originally made them last year for a friend who wanted "baby friendly" St. Patrick's Day cupcakes for her son's day care. I didn't know what baby friendly cupcakes meant, so I figured I'd just make something low sugar with no artificial ingredients and some hidden healthy stuff. (I topped those original cupcakes with an avocado cream cheese frosting, which made me sad because avocado+cream cheese tasted really good and all I wanted to do was add some garlic and onion to it and spread it on toast. Instead I, very reluctantly, had to add sugar)

I had low expectations for those cupcakes, as they were meant for tiny people who hadn't yet grown all of their teeth, but they were surprisingly tasty. I decided to try and make them again for Christmas, tweaking the recipe up a bit for adults, and topping them with some red velvet frosting. Those were really good, but I decided to make the full recipe in the blender, and the flour got overworked, so they came out a bit on the gummy side (which was also sad, because making them in the blender was so easy!)

So here we've come full circle and I decided to once again, this time with the tweaked recipe and without trying to make everything in the blender. Whattaya think?

Green enough for you? Except for the candy decorations, there is not a drop of food coloring in these bad boys. Have you guessed what makes that possible yet?

The answer is spinach. These cupcakes are loaded up with some green leafy goodness adding color and nutrition without tasting like it. While the cupcakes do have a different flavor than a straight up vanilla cupcake would, nobody can tell you made them with spinach unless you tell them. Plus, they're a lot healthier than a regular cupcake. You've got spinach, you've also got unsweetened applesauce, and there's only one stick of butter for the whole batch. It's practically health food. I've totally eaten these for breakfast and not felt one whit of guilt.

Of course, I've also eaten pie for breakfast and not felt guilty about it, so I may not be the best judge of food related guilt.

These cupcakes are a little more dense and a little more coarse than the ideal cake texture would be. You could skip the frosting and call them muffins, but then you don't get the moral superiority of eating spinach for dessert, and I'm not down with that.

As for the toppings, those are not healthy, but that's the part that makes them cupcakes.

The frosting is a cream cheese frosting, and it wasn't half bad, considering I'm not a huge fan of cream cheese frosting, but it refused to stiffen. I have never made a cream cheese frosting that stiffened properly. I don't know if it's because I purposefully use less powdered sugar than most recipes (most cream cheese frosting recipes are way too sweet.Tooth-achingly so. I don't think I will ever understand), but it never happens for me.

Decorations wise, I went super simple. I separated out the yellow M&Ms from a bag of spring colored ones (spring yellow is paler, but there's more per bag), and placed them on top to look like gold coins. Then I sprinkled some rainbow-colored Nerds around the edges to represent a rainbow. You could totally use rainbow sprinkles instead; that was actually my plan, but I saw the rainbow Nerds in the grocery store and I got excited. XD

I realized afterwards that using neon-colored candies to decorate my naturally colored cupcakes was a bit contradictory, but they're pretty so I don't care. (I actually didn't end up eating any of the decorated ones, so it all worked out in the end)

Spinach Cupcakes
Yield: 18

Ingredients
5 cups packed fresh spinach
1 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar*
2 eggs
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Cream cheese frosting

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Add the spinach, maple syrup, applesauce, and vinegar to a blender and blend until completely smooth.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed for about 5 minutes, or until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, until well incorporated. Add the vanilla.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add about half the flour mixture to the butter, beating on low until just combined. Add half the spinach mixture and continue to mix, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the remaining flour and spinach mix, and beat on low speed until well combined.

Line a muffin tin with paper liners and fill three quarters of the way with batter. Bake 18-20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool completely on wire racks before frosting.

*I have skipped the sugar before with no ill results, besides being not quite sweet enough, so if you prefer to not use refined sugar, you can leave it out.

Recipe by Kim

Spinach and Artichoke Bites

Did you guys know that it's Camp NaNoWriMo time? Because it is. And I always forget about April sessions, because April was always Script Frenzy month, except now Screnzy has been absorbed into Camp NaNo.

Have I lost you yet? I'm sorry. I forget sometimes that not everyone is fluent in WriMo-ese.

Anyway, April came before I remembered to have a "I don't have a plot" freak out, which ended up being a good thing, since I only had one plot idea rattling around inside my head. And that was originally meant to be the plot to a video game, but since I have no idea how to develop a video game, it's now been turned into interactive fiction. (Think Choose Your Own Adventure novels meet text based gaming. A great example are Choice of Games)

A while back, this idea for a game hit me, out of the blue, sort of a dystopian twist on the stereotypical dating sim. I actually love dating sims (also known as otome games or visual novels)(It's one of the few ways I'm totally girly. When I'm not summoning eidolons or restoring the Balance, obvi), but the biggest problem is that the grand majority of them follow the exact same format. I wanted to put my own twist on it and actually use the generic format to my advantage.

If I finish, you guys will totally play it, right?

If you're in the middle of writing an interactive fiction novel and still need to make an appetizer, these Spinach and Artichoke Bites are so quick and easy that you won't have to spend too much time away from your keyboard.

I am the segue master!

Seriously though, these bites were a last minute thing I decided to make for Easter since I had an extra sheet of puff pastry in the freezer from making my Mac 'n Cheese Pie, and an extra block of cream cheese from making my brother's Cheesecake Stuffed Portal Cake, and since my parents were having people over, I decided to put them together with spinach and artichokes to make a fancy appetizer.

And I guess they really were super fancy, because my aunt thought they were the frozen appetizers you get from the store. Then she ate one and was surprised at how good they were.

Everybody was all, "Kim made these?" and they were impressed and that confused me. I tried to explain that it was a simple matter of putting spinach and artichoke dip into puff pastry and baking it. I guess if you're not the type of person that has random sheets of puff pastry lying around, these just seem a lot more labor intensive than they are.

Trust me though, these are beyond easy to make. The filling takes little more than a bowl and a spoon to bring together. Then you cut the puff pastry into squares and put it in a mini muffin tin. Put a spoonful of filling into the pastry and bake. That's it.

Added bonus, these are perfect make ahead appetizers. I made them the day before, brought them over in a foil pan, and my dad stuck them in the oven alongside the ham for 10 minutes. Easy peasy.

Spinach and Artichoke Bites

Yield: 32 bites

Ingredients

1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened

1/3 cup mayo

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

1 (14 oz.) can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped

1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained

2 cloves garlic, minced

Salt and pepper, to taste

1 package (2 sheets) puff pastry, thawed according to package directions

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese and mayo together until smooth. Add the cheese, artichokes, spinach, and garlic, and mix until well incorporated. Season as desired with salt and pepper.

Spray a mini muffin tin with non stick cooking spray. Cut the puff pastry into even squares (16 per sheet) and press the squares into the muffin tin. Fill with the spinach artichoke mixture and bake 10-15 minutes until the edges start to turn golden brown. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Recipe adapted slightly from Park House Love

Things you may need:

So, you probably don't need No Plot? No Problem!, but if my various, effusive ramblings about NaNoWriMo have ever interested you, I totally recommend it. It was written by NaNo founder Chris Baty, who is funny and cool and awesome and signed my copy. :P

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links*

Mac 'n Cheese Pie with Bacon Lattice for the Ultimate Pi Day

Do you guys know what today is? It's Pi Day! But it's not just any old Pi Day, it's the Ultimate Pi Day! *voice echo**explosion sounds**special effects*

As you may know, Pi Day is March 14th every year because 3/14 = 3.14, the first three digits of pi. This year, however, the date is 3/14/15, and 3.1415 are the first 5 digits of pi. Not only that, but at 9:26:53 AM, we're at 3.141592653, a full 10 digits of pi. This is the only time this will occur in our lifetimes, you guys, and I think that's pretty darn cool.

Does that make me a huge nerd?

Fun fact: even though I'm actually pretty good at math, I was really bad at geometry. I took it freshman year of high school, at a time when I was flirting with the idea of going into architecture. After taking geometry, I knew architecture was a bad choice for me. If you can't calculate shapes and angles, you shouldn't be building things. Statistics is more my speed. I killed at statistics.

Now, I knew I had to do something epic to celebrate the Ultimate Pi Day. Since Pi Day is traditionally celebrated with pie for obvious reasons, that was the way to go. But me and pie, we're not the best of buds. I don't really make it that often, and I wouldn't really know how to go epic, you know? So I did some interwebz research and found a bacon topped macaroni and cheese pie on Buzzfeed. That sounded pretty epic, and also pretty easy.

Now, since I'm me and I don't follow recipes, I sort of went my own way. But in this case, "going my own way" actually meant using a couple of short cuts. You may recall that I have a block against pastry crusts. I can't make them. It never works. So, I bought some frozen puff pastry to use as a crust. I also, and I'm ashamed to admit it, bought the cheese sauce from the grocery store. That's not a thing I ever thought I would say, but I didn't really feel up to making my favorite mac 'n cheese sauce, even if it would have tasted better.

I also cooked the pasta in my rice cooker, but that's not a thing you have to do. I've just been cooking everything in my rice cooker lately because it's kind of awesome, and it was so much easier to use it than to boil the pasta on the stove. (Side note: I love my rice cooker. It has a steamer tray so I can cook meat and veggies with my rice. Full meal, no added effort, what's not to love?)

I added some spinach to the pasta because... I couldn't bring myself not to add a little green. It in no way balances out the complete unhealthiness of the pie, but at least you get something good with it. You could also add some broccoli or zucchini, or skip the green stuff all together. I won't tell.

Assembling the pie couldn't be easier. Just press the puff pastry into a pie plate. Mix together the pasta, sauce, some shredded cheese, onion, and cooked spinach and put it all in the pie plate. Take 8 strips of bacon and lay it on top, basket weave style. I folded the edges of the pastry over the ends of the bacon to prevent any grease from dripping into the oven, then I baked it up.

How does it taste? It's macaroni and cheese with bacon in puff pastry. You really can't go wrong here. It it the absolute ultimate in comfort food. The cheesy pasta, the buttery pastry, the salty bacon, so many carbs it puts you in a coma, but the good kind.

One thing is that it kind of falls apart when it's warm, so you'll want to let it cool completely before slicing. I thought about putting an egg in as a binder, but I totally forgot to buy eggs when I was at the store, so I don't know if that would make much of a difference. You can warm up the individual slices to serve, or you could just eat it cold. I actually really like it cold. I know, I'm weird.

As a bonus, I remembered that I had a pi silicone ice cube tray, but since I wasn't making a dessert and couldn't really use chocolate, I was stumped as to how I could use it. I thought maybe I could pour some melted butter in the molds, but a random pat of butter on top of the pie seemed weird. Then I thought about using some of the cheese sauce and freezing it, but I wasn't sure how well that would work. Then I thought, why not just melt some cheddar and try that? And it worked perfectly.

All you do is heat the cheese in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, until it's melted. Then you just pinch off a bit and press it into the mold. Chill the refrigerator until set (between 30-60 minutes), then pop it straight out. I greased the mold first, but since the melted cheddar was pretty greasy itself, I don't know how necessary that really is. I'll just have to try it again (buy ALL the ice cube trays!).

And that's all there is to making an epic pie for an epic Pi Day. Nerd food at its finest.

Mac 'n Cheese Pie
Yield: 1 9inch pie (6-8 servings)

Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
8 oz. elbow macaroni
2 cups packed fresh spinach
1¼ cups cheese sauce
1 heaping cup shredded cheddar cheese
¼ cup diced red onion*
8 slices of bacon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Press the puff pastry into a 9 inch pie plate and trim off the excess. Prick the pastry a few times along the bottom with a fork.

Cook the pasta according to the package directions, for 1-2 minutes less than recommended. Drain and return to the pot. Stir in the cheese sauce and spinach. Heat on low while stirring, until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat and stir in the shredded cheese and diced onion.

Spread the pasta evenly into the prepared pastry. Place the bacon on top (4 strips vertically, 4 strips horizontally) and weave in a basket weave pattern (1 over, 1 under). Tuck the ends of the bacon into the pie. Fold up the edges of the pastry over the bacon to prevent grease runoff.

Bake for 15-25 minutes, until the bacon is cooked through and the pastry is golden brown (tent the edges with foil if it starts to brown too quickly). Allow to cool before slicing.

*If using a cheese sauce that already has onion, feel free to skip

Recipe inspired by Buzzfeed

Things you may need (affiliate links):

One Pot Spinach and Tomato Pasta

I'm going to be completely geeky for a sec (though really, when do I ever stop?). I bought myself and early birthday present in the form of a video game called Life is Strange. That title may or may not sound familiar to you, as there was recently some controversy when every publisher except for Square Enix told the developers that they wouldn't touch the game unless they changed the protagonist from female to male.

But I'm not here to talk about that (although I could give a good long rant), even though I'm a little happy that it happened. Not publishers going, "no, girls have cooties!" but the fact that it gave the game such early publicity. I've recently gotten into adventure games, and I've been waiting for a more interactive title. Adventure games have the tendency to feel a little bit passive, but Life is Strange promises choices that have real consequences to the story, plus the power to reverse time that will probably lead to a kind of butterfly effect. (The first time Max reverses time, she was taking a picture of a butterfly. Subtle, devs, real subtle).

I'm not pleased with the fact that it's being released in chapters, though. That's a new thing that's been happening with adventure games lately, and while it makes a certain amount of sense for indie games, a big publisher like Square Enix should be able to release the whole game in one fell swoop. The first chapter is mostly exposition with a couple of fairly basic fetch quests, and even though I'm a pretty slow gamer (I like to explore and talk to everyone), I finished it in one sitting. Still, I'm excited to play the next chapter and see how my choices effect the rest of the game.

Anyway, that concludes my geeky update for today. I was just really excited about that game. Now we can move on to the stuff you care about: the pasta.

Do you ever notice that there are a lot of recipes out there that claim to be one pot recipes, but then you read the ingredients and it will say, "8 oz. spaghetti, cooked and drained," or "1 cup cooked white rice." Umm, no. If I have to have the pasta or rice already cooked, then I have to use a second pot to do that cooking, ergo, you are not a one pot recipe so go sit in the corner of shame.

That's not to say that there aren't actual one pot recipes on the interwebz, but then these imposters will show up while I'm looking for a real recipe and they'll make me so angry that I ragequit and just end up making a bowl of pasta in the microwave, like you do.

This recipe, however, is a real one-pot recipe. Or technically, a one skillet recipe, since I didn't actually make it in a pot. The first time that I made it was during snowmaggedon, which while being a lot less snowmaggedony than predicted, was still not weather I wanted to go out in. I had spent most of the day making brownies and then realized I had nothing prepped for actual food. I searched the fridge and found some chicken I had defrosted, some cherry tomatoes, half a carton of chicken broth, and some frozen spinach. In the pantry, I had half a box of rotini. I threw all of these things into my big skillet and it turned into this super delicious pasta and crazy easy pasta dish.

This time I made it with canned tomatoes and fresh spinach. I like it better with the canned tomatoes because fresh tomatoes take longer to cook down, but honestly you could go either way. With the spinach, I prefer using the fresh just so I don't have to defrost the frozen. It's all about the priorities.

The key to this dish is in its simplicity. The sauce is no more than tomatoes and chicken broth, with a little parmesan stirred in at the end. The pasta cooks directly in the sauce and in turn, the starch from the pasta helps thicken the sauce. The spinach cooks alongside the pasta. There's onion and garlic in there for flavoring, but if you want the dish to come together even faster, you can always use onion and garlic powder. You could even skip the chicken (and use vegetable broth) for a vegetarian dish.

One Pot Spinach and Tomato Pasta
Yield: 3-4 servings

Ingredients
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast, chopped into bite size pieces
1/2 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 (14.5 oz.) can diced tomatoes
2 cups packed fresh baby spinach
8 oz. rotini pasta
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
Sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper, to taste

Directions
In a large nonstick skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the chicken, onion, and garlic, and cook, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is no longer pink.

Add the tomatoes and the chicken broth and heat until it starts to bubble. Stir in the pasta and spinach, turn the heat to low and cover. Simmer for 8-10 minutes, until the spinach is wilted and the pasta is tender. Stir in the cheese and season to taste.

Remove from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes, until the sauce has thickened. Serve hot.

Recipe by Kim

Things you may need:

*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links*

Spinach and Goat Cheese Gnocchi

I feel like I'm out of practice with this whole food blogging business. Like, this whole mini-vacation I gave myself kind of screwed me over.

Like this recipe, it came from my photo archives. The archives, man. I don't archive. This is not how I do things.

But you know, it's all your fault. You said you wanted more savory dishes, even though this was always meant to be a primarily dessert blog (and crafts. Desserts and crafts. That's why I called it Treats & Trinkets). I don't do recipes when I cook savory. I do throw-things-in-a-pan-and-see-what-happens. But here I am, with a savory dish from the photo archives and now I'm all screwed up because of it, and it's all your fault.

Good thing is, I can cross something off of my foodie bucket list. I've wanted to try making gnocchi for a while now, and I stumbled across this recipe from Brokeass Gourmet when I just-so-happened to have some spinach and goat cheese in the fridge that needed to be used. The gnocchi was good, tangy, flavorful, and filling. Spinach and goat cheese is an a-plus combo in my book, and pasta is always a good thing, so when you put them together, something magic happens.

I also had some Roma tomatoes in the fridge that were on their way out, so I whipped up a simple tomato butter sauce (literally just tomatoes and butter, with some seasonings), but while it was good, it was a little too creamy to go with the gnocchi in my opinion. I'd suggest going with something lighter, or maybe even just toss it with some olive oil, minced garlic, and diced fresh tomatoes. You really want to give the gnocchi a chance to shine.

So here's your savory dish. I must admit, it was pretty tasty, and I'm glad I tried out something new. But can we please go back to our regularly scheduled sugar and butter posts now?

Spinach and Goat Cheese Gnocchi
Yield: 2 servings

Ingredients
1 cup packed chopped spinach
2/3 cup all-purpose flour, plus more for sprinkling
4 oz. creamy goat cheese
1 egg
1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper (I used freshly cracked)
Pinch nutmeg
Olive oil, for frying

Directions
In a large mixing bowl, mix together all ingredients except for the oil until well incorporated. If the dough seems too sticky, add some extra flour. Gather the dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.

In a large frying pan, add just enough olive oil to coat the bottom and heat on medium-high. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into two thin logs, about 8 inches long. Cut them into one inch pieces.

Add the gnocchi to the prepared pan, and cook for about 2-3 minutes per side, until golden brown. Serve immediately.

Recipe adapted from Brokeass Gourmet

Bowties Are Cool Blueberry Goat Cheese Pasta Salad

It's Saturday! You know what that means, kids: It's Doctor Who time!

Yay!!!!!

In case you missed it last week, I'm doing a new weekly series in honor of Doctor Who's 50th anniversary this year.

(Btdubs: Feel free to share your thoughts on last week's episode, The Bells of St. John. It wasn't my favorite episode, but I now totally get why Oswin was such a genius, and why the daleks turned her into one of them (although, I still don't get why the daleks would make other people dalek when they view everything else as inferior. They're not cybermen for crying out loud. They don't do upgrades) Annnnnnd discuss)

This week we're still focusing on the newest Doctor, because if he's only taught us one thing, it's that bowties are cool.

Source

On the interwebs, I read that Matt Smith's costume was originally supposed to be completely different and kind of pirate-y. I also read that Steven Moffat (executive producer and head writer) was completely against the idea of a bowtie, but that Matt wasn't really the Doctor until he donned the tweedy jacket and the bowtie and then started to pretend that his pen was a sonic screwdriver.

Side note: How adorable is Matt Smith? I want to shrink him and keep him in my pocket. Is that weird? I think that might be weird.

Given the inherent coolness of the bowtie, there was no doubt that I would make something with bowtie pasta for this series. My original thought was to do that trick where you dye the pasta by adding food coloring to the boiling water. Just a few drops it said. That's all you'll need, it said. It's so easy, it said.

It lied. Like a rug.

Instead of lovely TARDIS blue bowtie pasta, I had sad little grayish bowtie pasta. Those bowties were NOT cool.

Disheartened, I went to Home Goods for some retail therapy, where among other things, I found elderberry white balsamic vinegar. I was intrigued (and my brother immediately started quoting Monty Python), and grabbed it. Then I was watching Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives, and they made a pie with blueberries, goat cheese, and fresh basil. That flavor combination sounded fabulous, but we all know that I have some issues with pie.

Then suddenly, like an invasion of Sontarans, it struck: Blueberries. Blue, like the TARDIS is blue. With a fruity balsamic vinaigrette. In a pasta salad. A bowtie pasta salad. Which would be cool. Literally. Because it's served chilled.

...

My mommy thinks I'm funny.

Time itself must have bent over backwards to get me to make this salad, because it is officially my favorite salad in the history of ever. I'm not usually not a fan of the sweet/savory combo, and I never like fruit in my salad, but for some reason, this hits all the right notes. The firm pasta, the lightly sweet homemade vinaigrette, the bitterness of the spinach, the tang of the goat cheese, the slight tart of the berries, with the underlying note of the fresh basil. (The tomatoes are really just there for color. I picked them out afterwards. They didn't really go. Hashtag foodbloggerproblems)

Best. Salad. EVER. And also one of the prettiest. :3

Whovian or not, there are three facts that must be universally acknowledged as true:

1. Bowties are cool.
2. This salad is awesome.
3. And this is me almost every time I go to cook something:

Source

"What are you making?" "I don't know. It's a thing in progress. Respect the thing!"

Blueberry Goat Cheese Pasta Salad {Printable Version}

Yield: 6-8 servings

Ingredients

1 box (16 oz.) bowtie pasta

½ cup fruity white balsamic vinegar

½ cup olive oil

2 tsp. spicy brown mustard

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ tsp. sea salt

½ tsp. freshly cracked black pepper

½ tsp. dried oregano

1 pint fresh blueberries

½ cup fresh basil, julienned

4 oz. goat cheese, crumbled

12 oz. fresh baby spinach (or your favorite lettuce)

Optional—cherry tomatoes

Directions

Cook the pasta according to the directions on the box. Drain and rinse well with cold water. While the pasta is cooking, mix together the vinaigrette: in a small mixing bowl, whisk together the balsamic, oil, mustard, garlic, salt, pepper, and oregano until smooth. Refrigerate until use.

Mix the cooked pasta with the blueberries, basil, half of the goat cheese, and about half of the vinaigrette (and cherry tomatoes, if using). To serve, line the bottom of a serving bowl or platter with the spinach, and top with the pasta. Sprinkle the remaining goat cheese on top, and drizzle with the remaining vinaigrette.

Serve cool.

Tip: Salt the boiling water for more flavorful pasta. I usually cook the pasta 1-2 minutes less than the shortest cook time on the box because I prefer it more firm.

Recipe by Kim

It kind of looks like it's crying, doesn't it?

...

OMG, don't blink, it's the weeping pasta salad!!!!!

Spinach and Sausage Calzones

Am I the only one that gets a little worried about how their mind works sometimes? I was going to make pretzels. I had planned (that dirty, dirty word) to make stuffed pretzels. I had done research on stuffed pretzels. I had pinned recipes for stuffed pretzels. I had decided to do a spanakopita-inspired stuffed pretzels, with goat cheese (because I didn't want feta) and spinach and sausage.

And I made calzones. Brain, stop trolling me. I now have an unused log of goat cheese in my refrigerator, all thanks to you.

To be fair to Mr. Brain (although he doesn't deserve it, since this is far from the first time he's done it to me)(and he's now apparently male for some reason. I don't know. I'm special.) I was already a bit disheartened by a recipe fail earlier on. I had found the easiest bread recipe in the world, and I was going to make it, then I was going to make a panini with it, and I'd be set with my recipes for the week. Then the bread came out of the oven, and it was gross. See, more planning, and more planning fails. I should really know better.

Anyway, I was disheartened by the bread fail, and Mr. Brain didn't want to go through that agony again. So slowly, stuffed pretzels became stuffed pretzel buns, which became stuffed buns, which turned into calzones.

And, you know, these turned out amazing, so you can't really be too mad at Mr. Brain. He came up with this filling, which is the most epic of noms. Seriously, if it wasn't for the fact that there was raw egg in it, more of the filling might have ended up in my mouth than in the calzones. Creamy and garlicky with the spinach and the sausage and the little tang from the Swiss. Cripes, I'm drooling. I made it pretty super garlicky, but you could tone that down if you want. Just don't tell me, because then we can't be friends.

If you increased the ricotta, this would make killer lasagna or stuffed shells. Or you could wrap it in super simple pizza dough and have a bunch of these hand-held beauties ready for your Superbowl party. Which is soon, right? Soonish? I don't know; I have board game parties, not football parties. But these work well there, too.

So maybe Mr. Brain's trolling all works out for the best. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Spinach and Sausage Calzones {Printable Version}

Yield: 10 individual calzones

Ingredients
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
Big pinch crushed red pepper (optional)
1lb sausage meat (casings removed)
16oz. ricotta cheese
1 pkg. (10oz.) frozen spinach, thawed and drained
½ cup shredded Swiss cheese
2 eggs
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dried oregano
½ tsp. dried basil
½ tsp. sea salt
Freshly cracked pepper, to taste
1 recipe Basic Pizza Dough (see below), or premade pizza dough
1 tsp. water

Directions
Preheat the oven to 450°F. In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the onion, garlic,
and red pepper and cook, stirring constantly, until the onions are translucent. Add the sausage meat and
continue to cook until the sausage has cooked through. Drain off the fat and set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, mix the ricotta, spinach, Swiss, 1 egg, and seasonings until smooth. Mix in the sausage.

Divide the pizza dough into 10 even pieces. Flatten into rounds and roll out to ¼” thickness. In the center
of each round, mound about 3 tbsp. of the sausage filling. Fold the dough in half over the filling, and
pinch the sides together to seal. Place the calzones on an ungreased cookie sheet, and pierce with a
fork. Beat the remaining egg with 1tsp. of water, and brush the tops of the calzones with the egg wash.

Bake 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 400°F and bake another 5-10 minutes, until the
calzones are an even golden brown. Let cool a few minutes before serving.

Recipe by Kim

Basic Pizza Dough {Printable Version}

Yield: 1 12inch thin crust pizza

Ingredients
1 tbsp. active dry yeast
¾ cup plus 2 tbsp. warm water (about 110°F)
2¾ cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. olive oil

Directions
Dissolve the yeast in the water and let activate for 10 minutes. In a large mixing bowl, mix the flour and
salt, and make a well in the center. Pour the yeast mixture into the well, and using a fork, pull the flour
into the yeast mixture. Continue stirring until a dough forms.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic,
about 10 minutes. Add more flour as necessary to prevent the dough from sticking.

Coat the inside of a clean bowl with the olive oil. Form the dough into a ball, and place it in the bowl,
turning it over to coat with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled in size, about 1
hour. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface. Punch down the dough, and form it into a ball.
Cover with a dish towel and let rise again for about 20 minutes, until almost doubled in size. Stretch into
desired shape and bake as directed.

Recipe adapted slightly from Williams-Sonoma The Best of the Kitchen Library: Baking

This recipe is featured on Foodie Friends Friday Linky Party