French Baguettes

You guys I LOVE THIS RECIPE!  For a bread recipe its pretty quick and it turned out really well! I decided to use mine for french bread. Dallen and I ate the whole thing in one setting! Healthy I know but seriously it was yummy! 

Im sorry I'm too lazy to type up the recipe but I got it from "The Food Nanny" and hopefully you can just zoom up on this picture! 

One thing she recommends is before you start making your bread to pre-heat the oven and put a pan of water on the bottom shelf to help create humidity and leave it there during the baking process which is supposed to help the bread have a nice crispy crust. She said professional ovens have misters...who knew? Anyway I highly recommend this recipe its awesome! 

Lemon Ricotta Pasta

On a scale of 1-10 I would rate this recipe at like a 6 or 7, It wasn't my fav but it also wasn't too bad! Which might be my own fault, I may have added too much lemon on accident so it was pretty lemony so we ate ours with french bread and that seemed to help! I would say give it a try! We aren't big pepper eaters so I left those out and I also didn't put as much spinach as it called for cuz it just seemed like too much. Find it here!

Ranch Pasta Salad

This recipe makes a lot of pasta...so if there are only two of you I would cut the recipe in half. We are still eating this salad and I made it over a week ago! Its a good recipe and one that you can pretty much add whatever you want! I added olives because what is a pasta salad without olives?! Next time I make this recipe I will 86 the peppers and the yogurt and just use all mayo. (I don't use miracle whip because I think its nasty!) Recipe here!

Ranch Roasted Potatoes

2 pounds red potatoes, washed and quartered
1/4 cup vegetable or olive oil
1 (1-ounce) packet dry Ranch dressing mix

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Cover a baking sheet with foil and set aside. Place potatoes in a resealable plastic bag and add oil. Toss to coat completely and add dry salad dressing mix to the bag. Toss once again to coat potatoes in dressing mix. Bake on prepared baking sheet 35 minutes, or until potatoes are brown and crisp.
Makes 6 servings!

We also liked this recipe a lot. It was crazy easy. We thought they almost tasted like potato wedges. Next time I think I would add just a little season salt to add a little more flavor!

Risotto

 This stuff is so good, I love it! I have to admit I was kinda surprised it turned out so well! While you are cooking it, it doesn't look very appetizing but don't worry once you add the cheese it starts to look the way it should!

Risotto is a side-dish and although it is quite good alone I think it should probably be eaten with some sort of meat. We went for chicken! I enlisted Dallen to help to me and he did a great job with the chicken! We just happened to have half a lemon in our fridge so we had lemon chicken! It was tasty!

This is my first time making Risotto (but not my last :)) and although we had it plain I think its one of those dishes you can pretty much add whatever you want to it; corn, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots…whatever floats your boat really! It did call for parsley and although we didn't have any fresh parsley my grandma gave us a lovely spice rack that just so happened to have dried parsley so we added that later. I'm not really sure it adds any flavor as it just makes it look pretty. Also it only calls for 1 cup of Parmesan cheese but the bag was a 1 1/2 C. so I just used it all! 

Simple Parmesan Risotto -By the Food Nanny

5 cups chicken broth
4 tbs butter (divided)
11/2 cups finely chopped onion
11/2 cups arborio rice
1 cup grated parmesan cheese
Salt and ground black pepper
2 tbs chopped fresh italian parsley
Shaved parmesan cheese

1. Bring the broth to boiling in a medium saucepan. Decrease the heat to low and cover the pan.

2. Melt 2 tbs of the butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion; cook and stir until very tender but not brown, about 10 min. Increase the heat to medium. Add the rice and stir for 1 min.

3. Add 11/2 cups of the hot broth. Boil gently until the broth is absorbed, stirring frequently. Add another 1 cup broth; stir until broth is absorbed. Add the remaining 2 1/2 cups broth, 1/2 cup at a time, allowing the broth to be absorbed before adding more. Stir frequently until the rice is tender and the mixture is creamy, about 20 min.

4.Stir in the remaining 2 Tbs butter and the grated parmesan. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a serving bowl. Sprinkle with the parsley and shaved parmesan.