Pasta with Arugula Pesto, Toasted Walnuts, Goat Cheese and Beets

This was another "cleaning out the fridge" recipe, or "mixed grill" if you're the Real Martha. Sick of the usual arugula salad with beets, nuts and goat cheese, I decided to look up pasta recipes incorporating those ingredients.Thank you, Google Machine. You have delivered. Yet again.
Hearty, sweet, salty, garlicky. Mmm.

Arugula and Beet Salad with Fried Goat Cheese Discs, Roast Beef, Hazelnuts and Orange Vinaigrette

Riffing off of a number of different recipes, we pieced this healthy and very brightly colored salad together after checking out the cherry blossoms on this random 80 degree day.

We mixed together arugula, roasted beets, toasted hazelnuts, and orange segments, then we topped that with sliced roast beef and this orange vinaigrette from Cooking Light, and finally, we borrowed the crispy fried goat cheese discs from this John Besh recipe.

We give thumbs up to the recipe as a whole, but think that the roast beef may have been unnecessary, as it gets lost amid all of the other strong flavors in the salad.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went to the beach for an early spring ladies' getaway, so I needed to bake a quick sweet treat to bring with me.
These peanut butter and oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips fit the bill: sweet, peanuty, rich, super simple.

Easy Salmon Dinner

Sunday Dinner: Roasted Miso Salmon with Lemon, really easy recipe!

The only thing that I did different from the recipe is the amount of cooking time. The recipe says to cook the salmon and potatoes at the same time, for the same amount of time :( Totally can't cook potatoes completely without overcooking the salmon. Instead, I put the potatoes in about 15-20 minutes before the fish, then left both in for another 10-15 minutes.

Also did asparagus with garlic, s & p, red pepper flakes, and lemon...easy and yummy!

Preserved Lemons

Somebody recently over-purchased lemons. I'm not saying who. In any case, we had about 20 lemons lying around and Tim noticed that some of them were teetering on the edge. I needed a quick but tasty way to use up the extra lemons; to preserve them (har har).

I've always had preserved lemons on my list of to-dos. Once fully pickled, the preserved lemons are used in Moroccan dishes like tagines. They're super easy to make (prep lemons, coat in salt, squish in jar, let jar sit); I used the directions from Simply Recipes. I'm excited to try out some of the various options when mine are ready in a couple weeks... maybe this recipe for Israeli couscous with roasted butternut squash and preserved lemons? I'll keep you posted.

Belated Birthday Magic Bars

Tim's birthday was last Saturday, but I didn't get around to baking something sweet in honor of his 32nd until Sunday. And we were hungover. So basically we ended up with whatever I could easily make with goodies out of the cabinet.
Ta da: Magic bars! A perennial favorite...

Tofu and Veggie Fried Rice

We made way too much pilaf for Sunday's Armenian-style horovatz, so I decided to make fried rice with all of the leftovers, also incorporating the leftover beet greens and stems. Feeling a little sluggish after a weekend of drinking and meat-eating, I decided to do a non-traditional spicy tofu and veggie fried rice with a little egg, loosely based on a couple fried rice recipes from Jaden Hair at Steamy Kitchen. My recipe after the jump!