spaghetti – Loving Food, Fashion, & Life

Casino Buffet Eating

Posted on June 7, 2015 by LFFL

Fried chicken, cream corn, baked beans, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, and baked potato chips.

So here’s yet another buffet I love going to. It’s at one of the riverboat casinos in my area. All of the casinos have buffets and I’ve tried them all. You know me! But this one just happens to be my favorite—and it has a massive buffet, too! There’s so much food you have to get one plate after another.

There are several food stations broken down into several different lovely areas:

Chinese food station
Barbecue food station
American food station
Italian food station
Salad, soup, & bread station
Dessert station

What’s a girl to do when confronted with all these options? By jove, I’ll tell you! Just get one of everything! After all, that’s the fun of eating at buffets.

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Spaghetti With Pancetta & Chickpeas

Posted on March 30, 2014 by LFFL

Made with spaghetti, turkey bacon, extra-virgin olive oil, garlic cloves, chickpeas, fresh parsley, pepper, and Parmesan cheese.

Yes, it’s yet another pasta dish. What can I say? I adore pasta and a lovely dish this was. But instead of putting pancetta in it like the recipe called for, I put turkey bacon into mine.

Sometimes when a recipe calls for either pancetta and prosciutto, I’ll substitute. The first time in my life that I ever shopped for pancetta and prosciutto at my health food store specifically for recipes I wanted to make, I didn’t realize these items cost close to $5278.99 per pound!!!

So once I realized I could easily use bacon instead of pancetta and ham instead of prosciutto—I went this route with substitutions in recipes. NOT every time, mind you—but for the most part. Once every triple blue moon, I will splurge on these fancy meats when I’m feeling a bit gutsy and adventurous.

Recipe for—Spaghetti with Pancetta & Chickpeas

So, if you have nothing else to do today, I dare you to take out a bank loan for half a pound of pancetta and a quarter pound of prosciutto.

Take-Away Life Lesson: Bacon can be a great substitute for pancetta and ham can be a great substitute for prosciutto if you’d rather not take out a home equity loan for these items.

Homemade Spaghetti

Posted on May 6, 2013 by LFFL

When I’m in the mood, I just love cooking in the kitchen. And it just so happened to be a spaghetti day. I didn’t really have a recipe to follow on this one—I just kind of put together anything I wanted to inside the pot. It’s my dinner, after all. Needless to say, it turned out just fine—a big batch of homemade goodness to last the next few days.

Ingredients I tossed together:

Organic durum wheat Capellini noodles
Ground turkey breast
Vidalia onions
Green bell peppers
Tomatoes
Mushrooms
Tomato Basil pasta sauce

I try to get most of my ingredients fresh from the City Market as a first resort and the Whole Foods Market health food store as a second resort. The farmers only bring and sell a limited variety from the farm, you know.

But you can’t get much fresher than getting your vegetables from farmers who just plucked them from the ground a few hours earlier. I just LOVE it! Healthy, fresh, ripe vegetables are the best and make your dinner taste so divine, dahling.

So, if you have nothing else to do today, try making your own spaghetti dinner without a recipe and just toss together any and everything you want to into the pot. It’s your spaghetti dinner, after all, so who cares?

Take-Away Life Lesson: When you use fresh produce just plucked from the ground, your dinner tastes so much better and fresher than using store-bought produce that had to travel country miles and sit a few days just to get to the local grocery store where you are. Eww. You deserve better.