voda

Since I've been making a lot of my own home made pasta and plan on giving it as gifts to relatives during the holiday season... I've been on the look out for pasta sauces that don't use cheese or tons of butter. I have several typical red sauce / red gravy type recipes, hoping to stumble on a few different recipes. The reason for non-cheese oriented sauces is that I'm unable to digest diary products. Any suggestions?

Stuffed Chicken Breasts, dredged and seared in a hot skillet and then baked for about 15 minutes. Made the stuffing out of diced acorn squash, green pepper, onion and celery. Omitted the cheese that was suggested to go in with the stuffing, can't digest the diary. Stuffed the breasts and closed them up with colored toothpicks. The colored toothpicks were a big mistake! When the chicken was baking the dye used in the toothpicks bleeded into the meat. Guess it's time to put normal toothpicks on the grocery list. Next time I make this I'm going to also dice up apples and go with a curry / allspice theme to the stuffing.

I like to make a simple salad that is served at almost all of the restaurents I visited for lunch in Tel Aviv, Israel. The salad is really simple consisting of tomatos, cucumbers cut into a 1cm cubes, lightly salt them and set them aside. If you like rough chop some basil, mint or parsely to mix into the salad. Mix in a teaspoon or more of EVOO or a simple balsamic premade salad dressing. Can be eaten by itself or on chips, or breads (flat or sliced). My mother used to ship me off to school with leftover spicey peanut noodle salad, fruit, bread and some sort of juice. I guess you need to be cautious of the peanuts if you know your childs or your friends are allergic to them. I also cook a lot of "rice bowls", simple rice dishes using brown or wild rice with prepackaged spice mixes or my own mixes. Then include some seered beef or grilled chicken, stewed tomatos, corn or what not. Should be some food for thought in this post :)

When I get bored of the typical breading + seasoning + drumb sticks, I turn to a marinade I usually use on chicken wings. I use a Jamaican Jerk Rub, which is this thick green mixture that when cooked yields almost a light crust on the chicken pieces. I don't have the exact recipe handy but it usually involves, onions, celantro (lots of it), all spice, thyme, cinnamon, fresh ground pepper, green onions, salt, nutmeg and peppers. Feel free to try different peppers, I started with lots of jalapenos but now use a mixture of habaneros(sp) and jalepenos. Best on a BBQ but I imagine you can adapt it to a broil easily enough.