Orecchiette Pasta with Crumbled Meatballs in a Parmesan Tomato Sauce

It turns out that Emma loves meat.  She will gobble down her braised beef, shredded chicken or crumbled meatballs even before she even goes for the macaroni and cheese!  So, this week I made an extra large (4 pounds!) batch of meatballs to keep in the freezer (here's my recipe & step-by-step guide... it is so much easier to make meatballs than you might think).  Now,  I'll be able to get one or two out of the freezer at a time for her lunches and our dinners.

I use pre-cooked meatballs all of the time - they work great crumbled up to make a quick meat sauce for pasta, or on a pizza.  This recipe for calls for pre-cooked meatballs crumbled into the sauce.  It is a great alternative to the typical browned meat as the texture and flavor of the meatball is far better.  If you keep them in mass quantities in the freezer, it can be a really quick dinner.

This recipe was influenced by both the Barefoot Contessa's Weeknight Bolognese and her Orecchiette with Sausage and Broccoli Rabe.

Orecchiette Pasta with Crumbled Meatballs 
in a Parmesan Tomato Sauce
serves 4

8 meatballs, pre-cooked (about 1 pound)
1 pound of orecchiette
...........
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cups of mushrooms, sliced
5 garlic cloves, minced
1 - 32 oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1 cup of pasta water (see *note below)
2 cups of spinach, stems removed
1 cup of parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta.

For the sauce, in a saute pan cook the mushrooms in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes over high heat.  Add garlic and cook for 30 seconds.  Add the tomatoes, crushing them one at a time into the pan along with the juice.  Simmer on medium heat for 10 minutes.  Crumble in the meatballs.

In the meantime, cook pasta for 4 minutes less than the package directions.

Add heavy cream to the tomato sauce.

*Ladel 1 cup of water from the pasta boiling water into the tomato sauce.  The starch from the pasta water will help to thicken the sauce.  Add spinach and pasta and cook for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and add parmesan cheese.

My Kitchen Office | Our Home

These days there is a lot of chatter about the dangers of "If, When, Then... I'll be happy" thinking.  Though I'm aware of the pitfalls, I'm not immune to their beckoning.

It is so easy to get caught up in "Only if..." ways of thinking.

When we were little, everyone taught us to dream... Now we're told to be happy with what we have.  Who knew day dreaming could be so bad?  What if I like living in my head every now and again, and dream about what might be?

What if I don't want to give up my dreamy thoughts in order to "be present."  Is one exclusive of the other?  I believe that good can come out of day dreaming - it is where creativity lives.

I guess the difference is that I refuse to wait.  I think the danger lies in never making the effort to make those day dreams come to fruition. 



While day dreaming about our future kitchen, where I'll have a big marble topped island and plenty of beautiful storage, I started to think about how great it will be to have an area in the kitchen where I can work.   I imagined I'd sit at a desk looking out a huge window while I blog... a day dream in itself.



...watch the Today Show, and store my cookbooks (who am I kidding, my barefoot books...).

Then I thought, why wait until then? 



Ah!  The moment all of us creative types crave - where day dreams and reality merge.

 

The ability to create something from nothing.

Can you believe that I already had this desk - hiding away in our guest room.  It matches the style of the shelving nicely.  

 I'll still allow myself to dream of the bigger kitchen, but I will do so gladly from my pretty little "kitchen office."

See the "other" side of our DIY kitchen and how we installed the open shelving that we mimicked in the "office" side, here.

Our Weekend In Pictures (mostly of Emma...)

My kids are crazy for balls.

 Emma's first word was "ball."  Mr. is never without one.

He has turned our backyard into a ball pit.

This is her first time to really play outdoors... there might have been kicking and screaming when we had to come inside.  I'm thinking I should have a big garden this summer... it will give me something to do while she and the Mr. pick up balls.  I wonder if she'll take to picking weeds?

She doesn't know the green one is there... she was trying to throw it to Mr. and that is where it ended up : )

Homemade Turtle "Puddles" recipe coming soon...

Sweet girl.

Homemade Pizzas

Mr. Darcy and I have started up our morning walks again.  I miss the charming New England town walks from last Winter, but...

We have some great spots here, too.

Mr. always checks for the ducks.

It is such a great way to start the day.  I'm just glad you can't see me in these photos - when we leave the house I have bed head covered by a stocking cap and am clinging to my coffee.  

But it always feels so good about 2 minutes in... especially when D turns and gives me one of these grins.

Boston Design Center

The Boston Design Center, normally only open to "the trade," opened its doors this past weekend

to commoners.  Some showrooms were having floor sample sales while others were

simply "open for viewing."

While I don't understand the concept of severely limiting your client base, it didn't matter to me.

I was just excited to see what design and decorating delicacies were behind

the forbidden post-modern facade.

I was most excited about going to Schumacher.  I've seen many beautiful Schumacher patterns and I wanted to see and feel the Martyn Lawrence Bullard and Mary McDonald collections.  I was disappointed to find that Schumacher was closed.  So lame!

Ralph Lauren was also closed but I was able to get these photos with

my crying face pressed to the glass.

Stark Carpets was open and I was happy to see their beautiful carpets in person.  I've seen some on One King's Lane and many of them appeal to me.  I was surprised to see that they also had a nice collection of antique thread-bare orientals and vintage Moroccans.  I'm on the edge of declaring Moroccans "over" because there are so many knock-offs but the real thing is still gorgeous.

In my mind, Stark is best known for their antelope carpet seen in this fantastic Jan Showers room.

The Kravet showroom was beautiful.  I didn't even know they sold furniture.  Their upholstered pieces are very elegant and some their case pieces are surprisingly modern.  

Their fabrics are all soft to the touch and seem quite luxe.  

You could spend weeks going through all of the fabric showrooms.  Weeks!

It would be easy to get overwhelmed in just one.

Here are few that appealed to me.

1.  Gaston y Daniela, Segovia pattern, Gris colorway

2.  Gaston y Daniela, Matsuyama pattern,verde colorway

3.  Brunschwig & Fils, Le Jardin Chinois, Aqua/Green colorway

4.  Gaston y Daniela, Regencia, Chocolate colorway

One of my favorite places was Janus et Cie, a beautiful showroom

that focuses on indoor and outdoor seating.

I was totally in love with the boxwood clad walls.

...their beautifully designed space and their great products.

I would love to have four of the wicker chairs around a small table on

my back porch when that gets replaced.

I was recently reading about this beautiful kitchen via this Tokyo Jinja post and noticed that the

subway tile was from Ann Sacks so I psyched to see it at the design center. 

What a beautiful showroom.  I'm not one for glitz but this patinated gold tile

was pretty amazing.

Also very cool was their selection of their porcelain tile made to look like plank flooring.  

What a great choice this would be for a kitchen.

VERY cool!

I have a very photographic memory and I was sure this yellow tile (I neglected to get the name) looked very familiar to me.  

Does it look familiar to you?

I'm pretty sure it's the tile that Kathryn Ireland used in her Ojai makeover in the most

recent season of Million Dollar Decorators.

There was so much beautiful tile, I couldn't begin to show it all but I took great interest in the

mosaics at the Ann Sacks showroom which I'll show in another post.

Despite my disappointment at missing Schumacher, I had a great time having access to the

showrooms at the Boston Design Center.  I would love to have more time to see everything and educate myself better on the products that are available if only through the trade. 

Pantry Details: No Sew Curtain, Tiered shelf, & Step Stool

I'm back with some DIY details from the pantry project!

But first, I wanted to share a little snippet of our last weekend. We took a road trip with some friends to Savannah for the 3-day weekend (our second time there, we went for our anniversary two years ago) and had so much fun. The best fried seafood and drinks (chocolate daiquiris from Wet Willy's... omg.) and entertainment and stores and architecture and history. Love this city. Next time we'll keep driving for a couple more hours and stop in Charleston—heard it was a must-see!

I booked a "haunted pub crawl" called Boos & Brews for Saturday night. We stopped at the local (haunted) bars and were guided around the streets and cemeteries with real ghost stories—for the record, I don't believe any of it but it's fun when you're drinking ;)

Here we are getting ready to leave the first pub!

Here's one of the old haunted houses:

For our last stop, we went to the Moon River Brewery (which has been on Ghost Hunter shows) and they took us up into the attic where the ghost/orb sightings are common...

I didn't capture anything on my camera, but for whatever reason the spirits were posing for Brad's. He caught "orbs" in a bunch of his photos... like this one:

And check it out... we zoomed into this photo and look what we found:

See the face? Just below the white spot? Looks like some old guy with a mustache looking straight at you. Creepy. (ok, not really, but it would be if it was real).

Anyway, enough with the ghost stories. Let's get to the pantry!


CONTINUE READING>>

Chocolate Chip Blondies | The Barefoot Contessa Project

You all know that Mike loves Chocolate Chip Cookies.  He always insists "don't fix what's not broken."  An for him, it doesn't get better than a good chocolate chip cookie.



I knew he'd be excited about these Chocolate Chip Blondes (officially Chocolate "Chunk" but I used chips because that's what I had) because they are basically Chocolate Chip Cookies in bar form.  Not basically, that's exactly what they are.  In fact, I think it is The Barefoot Contessa's exact Chocolate Chunk Cookie recipe, just baked in a baking dish vs. scooped into cookies.

True to form, these cookies I mean blondies are delish.  My only note is that I only baked them for 22 minutes of the recommended 30 and they do not seem as goey or moist as pictured in Foolproof.  I wonder if it is because I used a metal sheet pan vs. a glass baking dish?  Anyone else run into this problem?

Don't worry though, we are still gobbling them up at record speed.  I took these photos yesterday and am looking at the last one right now!

You can find the recipe here!