I just love a good Alfredo sauce, don’t you? Rich, creamy, cheesy, and garlicky, but talk about some serious calories. Most Alfredo sauces are made up of lots of heavy cream and butter. The night before I made this, I had made a spicy chicken crock pot dish and had some leftovers. I thought it would be delicious served over pasta with the sauce to cut some of the heat of all of the spices in the chicken! So not really wanting all of the calories of a typical Alfredo sauce I went on a little search for a sauce with fewer calories. I still wanted all of the great taste and if you follow me you know I love Pinterest. That is where my search started and I found this terrific recipe!
INGREDIENTS
1 Tablespoon of butter
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup 1% milk (can use whole milk)
1/2 to 3/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 large egg yolk, beaten
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
Cooked pasta of your choice
DIRECTIONS
Combine butter, garlic, heavy cream and milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, remove from heat and stir in Parmesan cheese and the egg yolk whisking constantly to prevent egg from scrambling. If the mixture is too thick add more milk as needed. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve warm over cooked pasta.
Enjoy!
This dish became an instant favorite of Jim’s. He loved it from the first bite and I loved it because it was so simple and fast to make with ingredients I always have on hand! There were no leftovers with this dish and a very quiet dinner time as everyone was devouring dinner. Add a simple salad or some garlic bread and you are done!
INGREDIENTS
8 ounces bow tie pasta
1 pound Jimmy Dean hot sausage
1 (14 ounce) can of petite diced tomatoes, drained
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
DIRECTIONS
Cook the pasta in salt water until al dente. Drain well and set aside. Meanwhile, in a large pan, brown and crumble sausage in a large skillet over medium high heat until sausage is cooked through. Drain your sausage. Add your drained tomatoes to your cooked sausage. Then add your Italian seasoning and stir to combine. Add the cream and bring to a slight boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer uncovered for about ten minutes or until sauce is reduced and thickened. Add your pasta and grated cheese. Stir to combine and warm through if needed.
Serve warm.
Enjoy!
I found this dish on Pinterest!
A couple weekends ago I had the amazing opportunity to be one of the judges for the Greater Dover Chamber of Commerce Apple Harvest Day apple pie contest! I was so excited to be given the chance to taste so many pies and be with some amazing judges! There were four judges including myself. The other judges were Don Briand, a local radio personality and Citizen of the year for 2015, Mrs. New Hampshire Carrie Alex, who is both beautiful inside and out and Commander Christopher Polk of the USS Norfolk. Commander Polk and crew were “adopted” by the City of Dover for its year-long decommissioning process at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. What an amazing group of people, not to mention the other radio personalities from our local station WOKQ, who broadcast live throughout the competition!
I have never been a judge so I had no idea what to expect or how many pies I would be tasting. So, I turned to my trusty friends from Taste of Home Magazine and I got lots of great tips from them. So many tips my head was swimming in thoughts of pie crusts for about two days!!
Let me share some of the tips I received from some of the experts! They all started with the crust. They told me to try the crust by itself and decide if it was flaky, crumbly, salty, and were there any other flavors in the crust or was the crust soggy on the bottom? Wow, right?! Who knew there was so much to think about when it comes to pie crust, and that’s not all…is the crust cooked evenly. Is it decorative and how much space is there between the pie crust and the apples if it is a double crust? I know, crazy! So much info!
Onto the filling tips. Lots to think about here too! Are the apples sliced evenly, are they all cooked evenly, is the sauce runny or too thick? This too is just the beginning of the tips! Next up was the flavor of the pie filling. What kind of spices are used? Did it compliment or take away from the pie? Is there too much or too little spice?
Next up was the presentation. This really was more of a personal preference. Is the pie decorated? Was anything done different or unique?
I think you can understand why I was dreaming of apple pies for a couple days! So much to think about. Some other tips that were geared to being a judge. Things like…be sure to bring a water bottle to clean your palate, eat protein for breakfast, and my favorite tip was don’t eat the entire piece of pie because you love it and can’t stop eating it! This field editor told me this was from her experience!! Needless to say I took all of the tips and used them all when judging all 21 apple pies!!
We had three pies entered in the kids division, all were done very well! Then, we had 18 pies in the adult section and what a wide range of pies! We had an apple meringue pie! Wow! I would have never thought of that! We also had a pie that was just beautiful, the crust had an apple tree on it, absolutely outstanding! The pie that did win was a pecan, caramel apple pie.
This pie was also very pretty but all of the flavor so really came together and the crust was perfectly flaky! I did not taste one bad pie! Everyone did an outstanding job and certainly made it difficult to pick just one winner!!
So if you plan on entering a pie in a contest or get lucky enough to be a judge, I hope these tips help you as much as they helped me!
Enjoy!
If you follow me you know how much I love the show The Chew. Well, this recipe comes from Clinton Kelly. He made this recipe on the show and everyone raved about it. This is not a super sweet recipe but has notes of sweetness with the dates, but the butter really makes this bread. Don’t skip the butter as it truly brings the bread to an amazing place! If you are looking for something a little more sweet you can take my husband’s suggestion and put some mini chocolate chips in there!!
INGREDIENTS
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 can unsweetened pumpkin purée (15 ounces)
1 cup sour cream
1 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 large eggs
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup of walnuts, chopped
1 cup of dates, pitted and chopped
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (optional)
FOR THE BUTTER
1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
Zest of one orange
2 Tablespoons of honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter or spray two loaf pans with non stock spray. In a large bowl add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and cloves. Whisk to combine. In a separate large bowl add the pumpkin, sour cream, sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs. Whisk to combine. Add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients a little at a time stirring to combine until all of the dry ingredients are well combined. Fold in the walnuts, dates and mini chips if using. Pour batter into prepared loaf pans. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes to 1 hour and 20 minutes or until cooked through checking with a toothpick inserted in the center of the loaf, If it comes out clean, it is ready. When cooked through remove from oven letting them rest on a baking rack for 15 minutes to cool completely before slicing.
To make the orange honey butter, mix all of the ingredients together until well combined. Serve with bread.
Enjoy!
I love roasting shrimp and rarely cook shrimp any other way, and that is how I started this recipe! I served this over jasmine rice because that is what I had on hand but you can serve it over any white rice. This dish comes together very quickly and the flavor is terrific with butter, lemon, a little bit of cream… what is not to love about that!
UPDATE- This is an original recipe I submitted to Taste of Home magazine and has since been published.
INGREDIENTS
1 stick of unsalted butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 sprig of fresh rosemary
Juice from one lemon
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
2-3 Tablespoons of heavy cream (to taste)
1 1/2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce or your favorite hot sauce
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 Tablespoon of olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Rice
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cook rice according to package directions. In a large skillet add garlic, rosemary, lemon juice, stir in Worcestershire sauce and bring to a simmer for 2-3 minutes. Meanwhile add the shrimp to a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper and roast for 8-10 minutes until shrimp are pink and cooked through. Add the butter to the rosemary lemon sauce stirring to melt the butter and incorporate all of the ingredients. When the butter is melted, remove the rosemary sprig from the pan and discard. Add the heavy cream, salt and pepper to taste. When the shrimp,is cooked through, add it to the lemon butter sauce coating all of the shrimp. Serve warm over rice.
Enjoy!
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