Strawberry Cucumber Spinach Salad and Sensational Chicken Carbonara

Oh wow! Look Mom, I'm blogging!

So how did this blog come about? Well, pull up a chair, my friends, and I'll tell you a story. One day, per usual, I was pinning away on Pinterest when it occurred to me that I've only tried a handful of the recipes I've pinned. And not only that I have a dozen or so cookbooks that I've hardly touched. I realized that I'm tired of making the same dozen or so dishes over and over again. It was simple. I'd simply jot a quick list of things to try cooking, and, over the course of a year I'd make all these dishes and expand my recipe box.

Yes, recipe box. I prefer my recipes handwritten on index cards filed away neatly in a box. I can't stand reading recipes on my tablet or laptop. Half the time my hands are gooped up while I'm in the middle of cooking and I don't want to touch my electronics with icky hands. But I digress.

It quickly became apparent that it would take *slightly* more than a year to work my way through my ever growing list. My first draft of the list, which only included main dishes, was 773 recipes long. If I made two recipes a week it would take seven and a half years to cook my way through that list. By the time I added in side dishes, breakfasts, breads, and desserts it's currently running 1,278 recipes long, and I'm not done sorting through my cookbooks yet. This is turning into a lifelong quest.

About halfway through writing the list I decided it would be fun to chronicle my adventures through my recipe-trying. And maybe it would provide motivation to keep working through my list so as not to give up and revert back to my same twelve-ish recipes.

As I cook my way through these recipes, I'll review them and let you know which ones are worth trying and which ones aren't. If I'm feeling really motivated, I'll even try to post the calorie count and cost of the dish. Hopefully you find this enlightening and inspire you to try something new!

The first recipes I selected and made today are the Strawberry Cucumber Spinach Salad and Sensational Chicken Carbonara.

The Strawberry Cucumber Spinach Salad comes from Marie at Yay For Food and I must say, this is a fabulous salad!

I apologize my food blogging photography skills are not up to the same level as all the other food blogs out there. I'm learning.

I'm not a huge salad eater, usually, but this year I'm determined to eat better. With our first little one on the way I want to establish healthy eating habits early so our kids will *hopefully* develop a wide and healthy palette.

Anyway, my Salad Pinterest board only had a half dozen recipes to choose from and Kroger had a great deal on strawberries this week ($2.98 for two pounds!) so this recipe was the obvious choice. It's definitely a keeper! This is a great way for someone like me to eat more salad; stuff it full of fruit. Besides yummy strawberries, cucumbers, and spinach it also has a fabulous apple cider vinaigrette along with feta and walnuts. It's everything a delicious salad should be! Dear Husband was less enthusiastic about my healthy eating vision but I finally coerced him into admitting it was good. That's a win in itself.

With this recipe I pretty much followed the recipe as it's written. I mean, it's a salad so there are only so many ways you can deviate. This recipe is great for all my vegetarian friends, too. The recipe says it serves four side dish servings but I think we'll get six out of our batch. I'd highly recommend this and it's earned a place in my box.

Breakdown of the recipe. Servings: 4. Total cost to make: $9.72. Price per serving: $2.43. Calories per serving 269-292 (my calorie tally came out slightly less than her calorie tally). I've decided to rate this as 5 Wooden Spoons, the highest rating I can bestow.

Next up, because a salad isn't a full dinner in my honest opinion (lunch maybe), I made Sensational Chicken Carbonara from Amber at Busy Creating Memories who adapted it from the Pioneer Woman's Bowtie Chicken Alfredo.

Now I feel it imperative to address the elephant in the recipe. It's called Sensational Chicken Carbonara but it is not, in fact, an actual carbonara. And as you can see, the Pioneer Woman got it right in the name; it's an Alfredo. Adding bacon to an Alfredo sauce does not a carbonara make.

So what is the difference, you might ask? Well, let's just take a quick jaunt down into Italian culinary history.

The very root of a carbonara dish is a pasta in a sauce composed of egg, a hard cheese of choice. pancetta, and pepper. It comes from Rome and is first mentioned in an Italian newspaper in 1950, and fun fact, was popularized due to food supplies brought in by US troops. Cream is a popular addition to the dish outside of Italy, and often in the US bacon is substituted for pancetta.

Alfredo is based off a dish called fettuccine al burro, which is a pasta tossed with parmesan and butter. It has evolved a bit to include cream and different variations include other ingredients. Fettuccine Al Burro dates back to the 15th century! Italians definitely know what they're doing with food.

Anyway, one can see from the ingredients list of Sensational Chicken Carbonara that it is definitely in the Alfredo family and not a carbonara.

But don't let that distract you! It's still a really good recipe. Al dente farfalle pasta tossed with a yummy alfredo sauce made from milk, cream, butter, and parmesan with pan grilled chicken and crumbly, crunchy bacon. Doesn't that just sound mouth watering?

I adjusted the recipe a smidge to suit my own taste. In addition to salting and peppering the chicken I also added poultry seasoning, which is a gift from God. Normally I would also brine my chicken but I totally spaced that today. I also omitted the peas. Dear Husband and I have an agreement that if there are peas in the pasta, he knows I'm mad at him (he doesn't like peas much). I didn't want him to think I was mad at him for any reason. I guess I could've substituted broccoli or something but that only just occurred to me now. How does that sound for next time, Babe?

So, the breakdown of the recipe. Servings: 6-8. Total cost to make: $10.88. Cost per serving (at six servings): $1.81. Calories per serving (at six servings) 455. I rate this at 4 Wooden Spoons and it has earned both enthusiastic praise from Dear Husband and a place in the box. But I'm going to re-christian it Chicken Bacon Alfredo.

All in all, this was a great start to my new food adventure! Check out both these recipes and try something new tomorrow! Much Love, Hailee