Creamy Zucchini with Linguine and Tomatoes

Creamy Zucchini with Linguine (and Tomatoes)


Ingredients:
Zucchini (or whatever the hell that squash is)
Linguine
Garlic
Milk
Olive oil
Salt
Red pepper flakes
Parsley flakes
Parmesan cheese
Tomatoes



Cut the zucchini into cubes. Actually, I'm not quite sure if this is a zucchini per se. It came from my uncle's farm in Idaho (near Boise).







Mince the garlic.



Put the olive oil into the pan and heat it up until it's nice and hot.



Put the zucchini into the pan.



Followed by the garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes.







It takes about 20 minutes or so for the zucchini to brown up nicely. This is halfway through.



And you know what that means! Cocktail time! This time it's strawberry daiquiris. Yum!



We bought these marvelous heirloom cherry tomatoes from the farmer's market this morning. Take the stems off of a few of them.



Then, cut them in half.



The zucchini has browned up very well!



So turn the heat down a bit and add the milk. The original recipe called for whole milk but I used 2%.



Stir it up a bit...



...and add the tomato halves.



Let the tomatoes cook in the sauce a bit. While that's happening, drain the linguine (you did have it cooking near the end, didn't you?).



Add the linguine to the sauce now.



Add some grated parmesan cheese.



Toss to mix it all up.



This dinner was so good. It was time consuming because the zucchini took a while to brown properly but you can't rush it.

Here are two random pics of the produce we got today.

Birthday Party Food!

Check out how to make lumpia plus lots of good food!

Ingredients for lumpia:
Lumpia wrappers (frozen section)
1 lb. ground pork
1 lb. ground beef
green onions
carrots
1 can water chestnuts
pepper
soy sauce
4 eggs



Grate a couple of carrots.







Slice the green onions thinly.



Add some ground pepper.



Add four handfuls - yes, handfuls - of soy sauce.



Chop up the water chestnuts finely.





Add your beaten egg...



Then mix well with your hands.





Carefully separate the wrappers.



Add a heaping teaspoonful of filling onto the wrapper.



Roll up.







This took a while...!




Hey, now it's time to make the confectionaries for the party. First it'll be the "nigiri sushi"!

Ingredients:
Hostess powdered donuts
Swedish fish
Fruit roll-ups (green)



I found it very easy to cut the fruit roll-ups into strips using a pizza wheel.



Cut the donuts into halves.



Lay the fish on the top of the donut.



Wrap a strip of fruit roll-up around the fish and donut so it looks like a piece of nori holding it on.







And moving on now to the roll "sushi".
Ingredients:
Twinkies
Fruit Roll-Ups (green again)
Dried Fruit or Jellies



Cut the Twinkies into quarters (removing a bit at each end).



Cut the fruit roll-up to match the width of your Twinkie piece.



Wrap it around the outside of the Twinkie.



Then cut the jelly and/or dried fruit into strips and stick into the middle of each Twinkie piece.






Back to the lumpia. Put your deep fryer on about 170 degrees Celsius. Lay a few lumpia into the fryer.





Cook for about 10 minutes.



I also made chicken wings and yakitori!

Before cooking (wings in the oven, yakitori on the BBQ):





After cooking! These were SO GOOD.





Check out the rest of this spread (the tempura didn't turn out quite right...).







My mom made her delicious Chinese chicken salad.



More lumpia... *droooooooool*





I have to say that making and coordinating all this food was challenging but, aside from the unfortunate tempura, it was all worth it!