One evening after a gauntlet of classes, I was racking my brain for something quick to throw together since cooking and a lecture-fried brain really don’t mix. To any teachers/profs out there: if students aren’t specifically signed up for night class, we don’t want to be in class at night! Ok, off my soapbox. I decided on chicken tacos, but had no condiments aside from store-bought salsa. I used the magic of cell phone internet to find a recipe for avocado salsa in the last 10 minutes of class and stopped by the store for a few things on my way home. The super easy recipe required a lot of chopping, but in this case, “rustic” looking is ok:

Avocado Salsa

This is, of course, pre-mixed, but afterward this salsa made a wonderful taco accoutrement.
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To start off the New Year right, I bought a copy of the Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook. Before you judge/laugh, 1) It’s a diet cookbook with a cupcake on the cover! and 2) I’m not really on the diet (so I can’t speak for its efficacy), but I always need some fresh “healthy eating” recipes around. So during the ridiculously cold snap we had, I decided to make the vegetarian Curried Apple & Pear soup from my new cookbook. This was a little outside my tastebuds’ normal comfort zone spice-wise, but I ended up enjoying it a lot!

Curried Apple & Pear Soup

Due to copyright issues I don’t think I can actually reproduce the recipe here, but I’ll give a walkthrough and maybe you can find something similar via your favorite search engine.
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While searching for a way to use my leftover ricotta cheese from the Portobello Lasagna Rollups, I came across this recipe for Spinach and Artichoke Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms, which conveniently took care of my leftover spinach too. Rachael Ray touts this as a lighter twist on spinach and artichoke dip, one of my favorite indulgent appetizers.

Spinach & Artichoke Dip (click image for recipe)

Spinach & Artichoke Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms

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