Mediterranean Couscous Cabbage Rolls

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Did you know Couscous is basically pasta? However it's twice as good for you as pasta is because it's pure grain and water instead of egg, grain, and water like pasta.

"Like macaroni and spaghetti, couscous is made from semolina flour, but rather than mixing the semolina with a prescribed amount of water and/or egg into a dough, couscous is made by rubbing the semolina between moistened hands until the flour combines with just enough water to form hundreds of tiny grains" Link

Copy-Cat Recipe: Macaroni Grill's Penne Rustica

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When The Other Williams and I worked the 9-5 we used to occasionally slip away for a lunch date and one of our favorite places close by was Macaroni Grill.

Our dish of choice was the sinfully delicious Penne Rustica. We would actually just share one order because it's that rich and filling. It's a cream sauce with shrimp, chicken, and prosciutto. Yea, it's really good.

Homemade Gnocchi & Sausage in Red Sauce

I always wished I was Italian. I love the food, the language, the culture but my English/German hertiage is a far cry from Italy. I like to think I have a little italian great great great grandmother somewhere in my genes. What? A girl can dream...

Neither of my parents or grandparents really cooked and my mother hated cooking. My grandmother made some mean cornbread dressing and spaghetti but no one in my family really enjoyed cooking the way The Other Williams and I do.

We can spend a Friday night, delicious Italian wine in hand, creating Old World Italian recipes from scratch and be perfectly happy. At least The Other Williams has a little Italian genes running through her blood.

Salmon Black Bean Tacos with Pineapple Salsa

But R, it's winter. Why are you blogging a summer dish in winter? Several reasons:

1. This is what I was craving for lunch
2. It was in the 70's in SC
3. Lastly, most of the ingredients were canned or put up in summer!

Cannellini Bean “Meatballs” with Tomato Sauce

We are constantly on the look out for delicious vegetarian cuisine. While both The Other Williams and I love meat, we do try to have 1-3 vegetarian dinners a week. We like our vegetarian meals to make us feel like we're eating meat.

Texture plays a big part in making a good vegetarian dish great. We added mushrooms to the original recipe to give us a little firmer texture. The meatballs are outstanding and the red pepper really makes these balls pop.

Whenever we make meatballs of any kind we make a full batch and freeze the rest. These bean balls were no different. They froze beautifully. You could certainly freeze them with or without the tomato sauce.

Eggs Baked Over Sautéed Mushrooms, Leeks and Spinach

There is nothing better than eggs. They are almost a complete food, meaning they have just about all the essential nutrients that the body needs.

I have long day-dreamed of owning our own chickens and walking out to the coop to collect farm fresh eggs. I'm also pretty sure that I'm making it into some glamorous, simple job that is really hard work and very dirty. Maybe one day I'll find out for myself. For now, we purchase our delicious eggs from a local farm about 30 minutes up the road.

We cooked this recipe up for a delicious lunch/brunch but it could be used for any meal. It's vegetarian and gluten-free and it's truly delicious! I love that they call for leeks. Leeks are one of my favorite veggies this time of year. We put them in soups and meat pies all winter. When cooked properly, leeks are a beautiful thing.

Everything in this dish is savory and rich, from the butter to the egg yolks to the wine/sherry you really can't go wrong with this combination in my book.

Italian Wedding Soup

The weather outside is getting colder and The Other Williams and I start craving soups this time of year. Soups have so many benefits it makes it difficult to ignore them. The most important one for us is the comfort a warm bowl of soup can bring on a cold day.

This soup is truly a masterpiece in a bowl. It's delicate yet hardy. It has amazing textures and the flavor is outstanding. It reminds me of chicken noodle soup only better. Italian Wedding soup is traditionally a green vegetable, meat (meatballs or sausage) and a clear broth. I think the key to making this amazing is good homemade broth.

Canning: Turkey Veggie Soup

Turkeys are going on sale every where right now and not being one to miss a good deal we picked up one at the local supermarket last week. We don't normally cook turkey on Thanksgiving because we go over to my in-laws to eat but we like to grab at least one turkey during this time of year to throw in the freezer or to can.

We try to make several meals out of one turkey or chicken for the two of us. This recipe will make convenient grab and go lunches or a super fast dinner.

We paid around $8 for our turkey and here's what we did with it. The Other Williams cooked the turkey in the oven first. We got:

• 2 turkey breast to slice for several sandwiches
• 3 turkey and gravy dinners for 2. One we ate the other 2 went in the freezer
• 4 quarts of turkey veggie soup with turkey broth
• 2 quarts of yummy turkey broth (click here to see how we make chicken/turkey broth)

Easy Homemade Focaccia Bread

Focaccia bread is a flat, oven-baked Italian bread that’s topped with herbs, cheese and other ingredients. It’s kind of like pizza crust on steroids and about 100 times better. I’ve posted many-a-bread recipes here on Williams Kitchen but none compare to this one.

Many don’t make their own bread because its time consuming. This bread is a quickie though (in bread-making terms) and most of it is waiting around for the dough to rise. It is also little to no kneading. The Other Williams just loved this bread and could not stay out of it.

This is amazing served hot from the oven with pasta but it can also be frozen, which is what we did. If frozen, take it out of the freezer and let it thaw overnight in the fridge, then bake at a low temp to re-heat it.

You can add just about anything to this bread. We topped ours with tomatoes and olives but you’re only limited by your imagination!

Freezer Friendly: Lasagna Roll-Ups

Do you ever have those days where you just do NOT feel like cooking? Believe it or not, we do too. With a busy life of school and starting a business sometimes cooking for ourselves is just the last thing we want to do. However, eating out a lot recently has started to show its side effects on the scale. So in an effort to stay home to eat more, even when we really don’t feel like cooking, it’s time to stock the freezer. It’s the single best way we know to keep us from just going out and one we’ve been doing for years. {Check out our other Freezer Friendly Recipes}

Having food already prepared is part of our business model for Terra Cuisine. We’ve even turned our business name into a verb at our house. For example, “we’re Terra Cuisining ourselves so we can heat and eat!” We get the same benefits that our clients do!

I recently discovered this wonderful recipe! Its portion control, it’s homemade, and it is really delicious! Why go out when in 30-40 min we could be eating these Lasagna Roll-ups? I made a HUGE batch of these and put them in 3 Pyrex dishes for freezing. When we know we’re not going to feel like cooking we just take these out and either let them thaw overnight in the fridge or on the counter for an hour. Then just pop it in the oven for a bit, add a salad, and dinner is DONE!

The recipe is so simple to make and doesn’t take too much time. I did cut the cheese back on ours a little and they still tasted so delicious! I also substituted Italian sausage (one link of hot and 1 link of mild) in place of the hamburger that the original recipe called for to add more flavor. I forgot to take a picture of the roll ups with sauce and cheese on the top but I did add that before they went into the freezer. Kids would love these and they would even be great for entertaining with. They are like personal little lasagnas! Enjoy!

Haricot Verts & Edamame with Shallot-Soy Vinaigrette

This tasty little side dish really could not be any easier. A while back I blogged about some of our favorite homemade dressings. One of our favorites of the favorites was this Shallot-Soy Vinaigrette. For this dish we just took some frozen hericot verts (or green beans) and some frozen edamame, tossed them with the dressing and tah-dah!

The vinaigrette is delicious as a sauce over chicken or fish also. It's thick and creamy and coats very well. You could add a protein of your choice (like chicken or tofu) to this meal and call it lunch or dinner also. Give it a shot and let us know how it turned out!

Summer Vegetable Crêpes

Did you know you could make your own crepes? What about that you can find them already made in the freezer section of most stores? Lastly, did you know that crepes are not just for dessert?

This delicious recipe uses summer veggies; which if you have a garden you might still be up to your eyeballs with, and a tangy sour cream sauce.  If you purchase the crepes, this is a super quick summer time vegetarian dinner.

We loved the flavors and fell in love with savory crepes! Try it and see why!

Tangy Tomato Garlic Soup

We're fortunate in that our neighbors rock! The people who live on either side of us are just awesome people and we all help each other out. One couple has two very fun dogs and we get to dog sit them when our neighbors go out of town.

Normally our neighbors will bring us a gift home from their trip as a thank you for watching the dogs, like playing with two awesome puppies isn't thanks enough! Recently they went to Athens, GA for a weekend and ate at a really cool restaurant called The Grit Restaurant! Like most of our friends, the neighbors knew a food related gift is always a safe bet with us so they purchased the restaurants cookbook and raved about the food there.

What's special about the cookbook and the restaurant is that it's vegetarian! All the food served and recipes in the cookbook are created for vegetarians by cooks Jessica Greene & Ted Hafer.

We did this tomato soup from the book recently and it was amazing. The apple cider vinegar really gives it a zing! Top with cheese, sour cream, or a buttery crouton and this recipe is golden!

Give this a try and if you're ever in Athens (we'll be taking a trip soon!), stop by The Grit and try their delicious vegetarian cuisine.

Kale Chickpea Pesto on Soba with Asparagus and Peas

We've been trying to incorporate a lot more vegetarian dishes into our diet and this one caught my eye while perusing the TasteSpotting website. At first I was like, "eww, kale..." Then as I looked at the recipe I realized the kale is in a pesto. So then I was all like, "Hmmm, maybe.."

Soba noodles are a staple in our house now. They are buckwheat noodles which means they are also Gluten-Free! Without even trying we scarfed down a vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free dinner!

 
And you know what?

It was awesome!! The textures and flavor were so awesome! We bulked up the veg a little and used a little of the pasta water to get the right consistency in the pesto.

The pesto is so creamy you might think there is cheese in it, but nope, it's the chickpeas and oil! We cut the recipe in half and still had leftover pesto. We're planning to use it in a sandwich for a picnic but it could be used in a variety of ways.

If you're looking for a superfood recipe that tastes amazing, this is it!

Tortellini Skewers with Pesto Dipping Sauce

Here is a really delicious and fast appetizer that you can make way before your guests arrive! I found this idea online and put my own spin on it but you can throw whatever you have on hand on these skewers.

If you're using them for an appetizer before a main course I would stick to 2 skewers per person. You can also use these on a buffet table, in which case I would allow more than 2 per person. These would be great for a kid's birthday, holiday party, or pot luck.

The skewers were so good and the combination of the tortellini, tomato, and pesto made it like a fun pasta salad on a stick. The only thing I would add is a spoon to the dip. That way people can spoon the pesto over the skewers instead of double dipping.

Creamy Garlic Pasta Salad

After spending the afternoon baking the Hummingbird cake with my good friend, RC. I then had to make dinner because The Other Williams was out of town for the weekend. I'm not normally the cook but this recipe was really so easy that even I could pull it off.

This pasta salad would be great for a picnic or camping trip also. It's good warm, room temp, or cold. I added what I had on hand so the veggies are totally interchangeable with whatever you prefer. We use the Creamy Garlic Dressing that I posted about previously and it gives the pasta great flavor and a light creamy sauce.

Salad Nicoise & Rainy Day Cooking

We had planned a bike ride but woke up to a cool southern rainy morning. So instead of hitting the road on our bikes we decided to go ahead and pre-prep some of our meals for the week. This saves us time during the week and makes getting dinner on the table a little faster.

So PJ’s and cooking it was. Whenever both of us are in the kitchen together I like to think that it’s like a well-directed and blocked play. We move as one, gracefully through our kitchen from one activity to the next. However, it’s not quite so graceful and it’s messy, very messy. We’re normally preparing 3-6 dishes or some aspect of those dishes. Cleaning up is my job and there is always a lot of clean up.

Had to share my hydrangeas! Aren't they gorgeous? These are in my dinning room and I love walking in and seeing them. Such a beautiful shade of blue.

For lunch we stopped the madness for a delicious salad that was supposed to be a picnic salad on the bike ride. Even without the ride this salad was amazing!

Last month I talked about Nice, France and it's close proximity to Italy in our Pan Bagnat Post. If you haven't read that one you should! I also talked about exploring this region a little more and this recipe happened to fit the bill very nicely!

Basically this is the French version of the chopped salad. Salad Nicoise (pronounced niˈswaz) has lots of yummy ingredients and is a lot of fun to eat because each bite is a little different. It's also very forgiving, we substituted and added things we had on hand. It was really delicious and worked even on the back porch while listening to rain.

After the cooking and cleaning madness, which really isn’t so bad, we relaxed on the back porch for the rest of the day. The Other Williams playing guitar and me editing photos and surfing pinterest. It never got above 70 degrees, which in the south in June, is pretty much unheard of. Even though a little work was involved overall it was a really relaxing day.

Pan Bagnat

Here in G-Vegas, our downtown offers a free outdoor movie once a week throughout the month of May & Sept. It's a great excuse for a picnic in my opinion. We loaded up this amazing little sammie and a bottle of wine and met a friend out there for a moonlight movie.

This sandwich was a huge hit and one we'll definitely be repeating soon. The flavors are so good! We added some yummy sardines to ours but you could also add good quality can tuna. The dressing seeps into the bread and the affect is pretty delicious!

Pan Bagnat is a classic french tuna sandwich that means "wet bread". Very popular lunch time sandwich that is sold in Nice, France in the markets and cafe's. What's interesting about the town of Nice is that it is around 18 miles from Italy's border, which means there is some Italian mingling going on in their cuisine!

I'm hoping to try a few more recipes from Nice very soon. I really like the Italian/French fusion that this town is known for!