Phoodos - For Casey

Pasta Carbonara
My friend Casey is a fabulous chef and has given us some fabulous recipes on her blog. This is my shout out to her. She posted a recipe for Pasta Carbonara and while mine is a little different, she was TOTALLY the inspiration for my experimentation with this dish.

Her recipe can be found here.

Here is mine (Lord help us - I threw a bunch of stuff in a pot that I wanted to get rid of before we leave for Christmas in Illinois.)

I used Bacon - LOTS OF YUMMY BACON - actually it was 6 slices of thick cut (and I baked it in the oven - 400 degrees until its crispy - because I vowed to never EVER fry bacon again!).

I used Penne pasta (cause that's how I wanted to roll that night and that's what was in the pantry). I boiled it and threw in some frozen peas during the last few minutes of boiling.

Sauce (my burner was on 6 or 7):
-melted 1/2 stick of butter in a skillet
-sauteed a container of sliced mushrooms and some garlic (don't ask me how much 'cause I just threw some in - add as much or a little as you want)
-added 1/2 onion, chopped, to skillet
-added about 1 1/2 cups of diced chicken (it was about half a package of the frozen diced chicken from Tyson)
-salt and pepper
-I added 1/2 package of cream cheese and let it begin to melt
-added a small container of half and half (oh, it's REAL healthy)
-added shredded parmesan (about 3/4 of a container from the store - I'm too lazy to grate it myself)
-Simmer
-add bacon, crumbled

Mix sauce with pasta/peas. Voila!

Veggie Lasagna

I also made Veggie Lasagna (last week - I'm late posting it). If you're interested, you can find the recipe here. We shared it with a couple from church - I have found it impossible to make a small amount of lasagna and soup/chili.