The Yum Yum Factor

This week I am making a soup to enter into the monthly cooking club challenge at  Food Network Canada.  The recipe is for  Nadia G's Italian Stracciatella with Mini Meatballs, Cheese Tortellini and Baby Spinach . I made a few changes, as usual. For starters, I don't really like store bought tortellini all that much. I didn't have time to make my own pasta from scratch in time this week, so I am made cheese tortellini using won ton wrappers. Store bought tortellini always seem a bit too doughy to me and I never really like the flavour of the fillings unless I am buying homemade tortellini, fashioned by italian grandmothers but I also didn't want to have to spend a ton of money on really good quality pasta when it's so easy to whip them up at home. It just shows you that you don't have to make homemade pasta dough to make stuffed pasta like ravioli and tortellini. I have used won ton wrappers for years for stuffed pasta with great success.

For christmas, I finally got my pasta attachment for my Kitchenaid and I could not be happier. Between my meat grinder and my pasta attachment, I feel like my culinary life is now complete. Okay, If you really stop and think about it, I will think of a hundred other things I want in order to complete me but at this point, I could not be more content. Now, if only I could have a kitchen with more than 2 sq feet of counter space, my life would really be complete. Okay, I lied, I do need a few more things lol. I am going to admit that the last time I made home made pasta and used my hand crank roller (for the final lasagne in my love 4 lasagne November challenge) that the hand crank came flying off the machine and hit be square between the eyes and left a HUGE , bruised lump. This may have been a deciding factor in Shack's obsessive drive to buy me this lovely treat for christmas. I am a good cook, I make very tasty food but I am a danger to myself in there. You don't even w...

This weekend was the final week of  Love 4 Lasagna at Piccante Dolce  and I had decided that I was going to try to make some sort of Lasagna Carbonara for poor Shack. He liked the pastitsio alright but none of these lasagnas have really rocked his world and I am feeling a bit guilty. I wasn't sure how I was going to manage doing a carbonara because the eggs would scramble when baked and that would most likely NOT score me any brownie points with anyone. I was looking around and reading recipes when Food Network Canada announced a cooking club challenge in which you must make Bobby Flay's Macaroni and Cheese Carbonara  . Come on, now perfect is that timing?? I had already decided that I would also make the pasta from scratch this time so this is what i did today: I made a half batch of homemade pasta with italian parsely and mixed up some ricotta and swiss chard  and made a small lasagna with half the ingredients and I made a mac and cheese like in his recipe w...