Day 13 - Italy - World Cup Eating Challenge

I've had a recipe for Italy in my back pocket since I started this thing, but I keep moving my "Italy" day becasue I was certain they'd advance. WRONG. So after spending all day Monday plotting out some English options and spending Tuesday morning debating between fish & chips or a "Sunday" roast, I went to check Fifa... and saw that Italy got eliminated. I'd like to tell you that I then spent a few hours debating between Italy and England but I won't lie to you. I wasn't planning on doing Italy yet, but there is no way I was going to pass it up.

Also... I had so much fun making the picture post the other day that I decided to take a million pictures for this one too. I really like these so I think they'll be popping up a little more often the next few weeks. All the pictures!!!

Since everything comes from Pinterest, it won't surprise you that my back pocket Italy recipe came from an awesome Pin I saw. I was following it mostly from memory so there were some changes but that's the fun thing about Pinterest - it's often just a nice Pinsperation and I can take the idea and make it my own. Anyways, this was a recipe for spaghetti squash in butter with Parmesan and parsley. The first step with spaghetti squash is always to bake it to soften up the inside. You can nuke it too but I think part of the skill of cooking is using down time to prep other parts of the meal. The microwave feels like cheating unless I'm in a rush or heating up leftovers. The squash needs to cook for about 40 minutes at 350 in about an inch of water so I stuck it in the oven and got cracking on the rest of dinner. 

Since the "pasta" part of this dish was going to be pretty heavy, I thought it would be great to have a little side salad. When I think of Italian salads, Caprese instantly comes to mind. I thought I'd take it to a slightly fresher level by deconstructing it and adding some spinach to make it a little bit of a leafier, greener salad. Before we get to the healthy stuff though, we started with the most important part of caprese - lots of fresh mozzarella! 

For tomatoes, I used these lovely greenish Kumatos. They're like the watermelon of tomatos but they have an amazing flavor. They're a little less acidic than a normal tomato so they are really good for just snacking on. I also used vine tomatoes to fill in the salad.

For greens, I used spinach and of course, basil. You can't have caprese without basil, but the spinach was my little addition to make it fresher. I also have a ton of veggies in my fridge. I did my bi-weekly produce order before thinking about this challenge and a lot of veggies haven't overlapped with the countries I was doing. It's sad though, because my veggies (which I get from Front Door Farms) are always fresh and awesome. 

I tossed the mozzarella, tomatoes, spinach, and basil together and sprinkled pepper on top. It looked awesome, but most of the tomatoes and cheese are on the bottom. 

My plan was to dress it in balsamic and olive oil. I did this on the plate though because I didn't want the salad to get soggy in the bowl. Balsamic is a great healthy salad topping. I always make sure to check the ingredients though because a lot will slip in additives or food coloring. My olive oil is from Campovida where I am a member of their wine club. I also opted in for olive oil and honey and they are awesome. 

Now that the salad was done, it was time for the squash to come out of the oven. 

When spaghetti squash is cooked, you can use a fork to scrape it out and it comes out in strings that look like... spaghetti! It's a popular healthy alternative to noodles if it's done right. 

Next, it was time to prep the other ingredients starting with fresh parsley.

For butter, I use Kerrygold grassfed butter. It's delicious and a little leaner than normal butter. I love it and they sell it at the best place ever - Costco.

...which is also where I got this tub of Parmesan cheese. I would like to tell you it lasts a long time but in my household, we love cheese so it really doesn't. 

I sauteed the noodles in the butter. 

And then added the parsley and a heaping handful of cheese... and then another handful of cheese after I took this picture. I maybe went overboard on the cheese. Cheese is awesome though so it's ok. 

Of course any good Italian dinner needs some wine. I pulled out this lovely Babera from Imagery. The lightness and acidity of it was great with my cheesey awesome dinner. 

It all came together so well! The pasta was a little heavy so next time I think I'd put a little less cheese, but the fresh Caprese salad was perfect to balance it out. I also realized that there was no meat in this. I'm a true carnivore so I was shocked it took me halfway through dinner to realize there was no meat. I think the pasta would have been AWESOME with some panchetta and it definitely would have made it more filling.