This post is long overdue, but I had the pleasure of hosting a few friends over at my apartment for dinner a few weeks ago…which meant lots of cooking! This was my first time throwing a dinner party on my own – I definitely underestimated how much time cooking would take and scrapped ambitious plans to bake a dessert, but hey, it was worth it.
Roasted Chickpea Salad with Feta
Modifications ~ Seasoned chickpeas with paprika and basil in addition salt / pepper, sauteed onions instead of using them raw, used balsamic instead of red wine vinegar, added walnuts, used “mixed greens” instead of arugula, didn’t use mint
Simple Spinach
Heat up a pan with olive oil, and once hot, add minced garlic (as much or little as you’d like with the amount of spinach you use). Cook the spinach thoroughly, and continue to drizzle with olive oil, curry powder, red chili, and salt.
Pesto Spaghetti with Zucchini
First step is the homemade pesto – so much easier than I thought it would be and, let’s be honest, to die for. You can never have enough pesto. I decided to make Parsley-Walnut Pesto since parsley was pretty cheap at the grocery store, but there’s a lot of different leaf – nut combos that work. Make sure you add enough oil (and water!) to make blending easy! I learned the hard way by settling for some kind of puree first, then making my pasta, then realizing I needed more pesto, and then revisiting the blender one more time only to realize that I could have made this pesto in 2 minutes instead of 20 if I had used more water…
(Fry the zucchini until it turns golden-brown)
And voila, we have a tasty home-cooked meal!
sharper than cheddar 