Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Why haven't they called yet?

This was the question that came out of my exasperated husband's mouth last night as I was making dinner. He is in the middle of his busiest time at work right now, where he has to make teams for a soccer league of over 800 kiddos and coordinate signs, jerseys, golf carts, port a potties, deal with parents, etc. Knowing that he could be referring to anyone, I asked, "Who hasn't called?"

"The dream home people! They're running out of time!"

You may remember this little post a while back about Derek's love for HGTV's dream home. Well apparently the show where they reveal the winner is supposed to air in 18 days or something like that, and he hasn't been contacted yet.

I asked what he would do if someone else wins it. He said he hopes they enjoy it as much as he would. He said he thinks that it will go to a family that has kids, and since we don't have any kids we probably won't win. But, that it would we be awesome if we did win, because his mom could go up there and stay in the dream home while she goes through her chemo treatments. I think that would be awesome too.

I can't think of a good transition so I am just going to completely change topics on you and share what I was making for dinner last night while this conversation took place.

I think a while back in some random post I mentioned that I have a good recipe for pesto. But I don't think I shared it. I may have. I've never gotten around to categorizing my posts, which I really should do, so I may have already shared. Either way, last night we had tilapia, whole wheat pasta with pesto sauce and strawberries and blueberries for dinner. This is one of my favorite dinners to make and eat, so I thought I would share with you.

First for the tilapia, I preheat my oven to 350. I just use frozen tilapia fillets that are still frozen. I spray a baking pan with olive oil and then brush a little olive oil onto the fillets so the spices will stick to them. You can use whatever spices you want. I used "Northwoods Seasoning" from Penzy's spices, which is an awesome spice store in Columbus. If you live in Columbus I highly recommend it.{Looking online it appears they have stores in multiple states, just not Kentucky.} The fish was delish! So I shake the spices onto both sides of the tilapia and stick it in the oven. I'm not really sure for how long, but just until it's cooked and flaky. While the fish is cooking I make the pasta and pesto.

First boil some water on the stove, and add pasta. While doing this, make the pesto. {I got this recipe from the newspaper a while back, so I don't know who it belongs to.}  Here is what you'll need:

2 cups chopped fresh herbs (I use a mixture of cilantro and basil)
1/3 cup of chopped nuts (I use almonds or pecans usually)
1/3 cup of olive oil
2-3 cloves of garlic
salt
pepper (not sure how much, but make sure to add enough or it will be kind of bland)
(and last night I added in a little bit of cayenne pepper, which I thought was really good.)
1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese.

Add all of the ingredients except the parmesan cheese into a food processor. I use a cousinart mini food processor and it all fits. After blending it all together put it in a bowl. Fold in the parmesan cheese.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it and serve with the pesto and the tilapia. Last night we had strawberries and blueberries with it, but some nights we do broccoli instead. It's whatever floats your boat. But I love this dinner because I think it's pretty healthy and you know exactly what is going into it.

And I should mention that I think the pesto tastes so much better when I get to use herbs fresh from my own garden. But it's still winter, so I will settle for store bought. I think this year I might try to make a bunch of pesto when my herbs are going strong and freeze it for the winter.

Sorry I have no pictures. I didn't think to share this with you til dinner was gone.

1 comment:

anna said...

Thanks for this recipe Anne! I had some Chicken Pesto pizza yesterday and was thinking, "I really need to make some pesto pasta ASAP!"