Food Should Be Made With Butter & Love

Date: Saturday, August 7
Source: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/zucchini-fettuccine-with-tomato-sauce-recipe/index.html and Garlic Stick recipe to follow

"Food Should be Made with Butter and Love".
That's what it says on a little wooden sign that I got from my Nani. I've always believed it. I just can't seem to get it through my head that carbs are bad, sugar isn't magical and butter shouldn't be spread onto every square inch of my toast until it glistens like a canary diamond in the morning sun.

Knowing this, let me tell you what I made for dinner last night - keeping in mind that the goal was not to pick up anything extra from the grocery store. I recently found a magazine that I think I am the last person to finally buy - it seems like everyone else has already been reading this - the September issue of Food Network Magazine. As I flipped through the pages, it seemed like there may be a few recipes that I would want to try or at least get ideas from. I never picked up this magazine before because my 2 favorite Fod Network chefs: Barefoot Contessa's Ina Garten & Everyday Italian's Giada DeLaurentis are now sort of out of my world. Given my present status as one-income housefrau with picky kiddos, making Ina's recipes, all of which include caviar, booze or both (love!!) and Giada's recipes are great, but most have too many ingredients or require too much thought to prepare. Anyway, this magazine had some easy, quick and fun recipes alongside 20-step taco pizza, etc. (if I have to follow 20 steps & 5,000 ingredients, I want a better result than a taco pizza. However, I could try to recreate Taco Bell's fabuloso taco pizza really easily and try to 'healthify' it... Hmmm....great idea for a future meal...

I digress yet again. On page 42 of this magazine, there is a recipe for Zucchini "Fettuccine" with Tomato Sauce that caught my eye. They suggested peeling the skin off the zucchini (and discarding that part) and then using the vegetable peeler to peel additional strips until you get to the seeds. Then, cut each strip into thinner strips - either in 3rds or halves, depending on how wide the original peeling was and use that as a faux pasta. The recipe called for ingredients I didn't have, but I did have 2 zucchini on hand. The rest of the on-hand ingredients forced me to make an old staple though. Spaghetti. In hindsight, I should have kept the sauce light, just did the zucchini noodles and side dish, but I wasn't able to think for some reason. There was something going on with Big C that day...I was sleep deprived (again)...something led me to make a meat sauce with zucchini noodles OVER other, real noodles (spiral ones - at least a different shape), but I should have just gone vegetarian. Oh well.

Whenever we have spaghetti, which is about once a week (*sigh*) because it's cheap, quick & easy, I always serve it with a veggie side and some kind of bread. Well, this time I made steamed green beans (again), but instead of butter, salt & pepper on it, I used butter (of course - I couldn't go without that...), salt, lemon pepper and a squirt of lemon juice from one of those plastic squeezie lemons, since I didn't have a real one on hand. If I did, I would have zested it onto the green beans in addition to squeezing the (real) juice on it. As it was, I had to do the fakey version. Oh well. They turned out well, but I think I will continue tweaking that to make it better.

I also made one of my favorite things that my mom used to make. I don't often make it because it they hold NO nutritional value and are terrible for you. Bisquick bread sticks. Mom, if you're reading this, I mean no disrespect. Not like me serving my family a par-baked QFC french bread loaf is the epitome of nutrition either. However, here's how you make them: mix Bisquick and water with a fork, shap them into a mound and then cut into 8-12 little pieces. Meanwhile you melt butter in an 8x8 pan over a burner. That's 1/2 a STICK of butter. Then you dredge each little Bisquick nugget in it, place it in the pan and shake a bunch of garlic salt over it. How much? Go wild. They are already dredged in HALF a stick of butter, so what's the point in going easy on the garlic salt? You put them in the oven for 10-15 minutes - check on them and pull them out right before the bottoms get burned too badly. If they do, who cares? You're eating butter and garlic salted nuggets of Bisquick and water. That said, if you have a saucy spaghetti and these nuggets-of-happy even touch the sauce, they turn into kindergarten paste (albeit salted and buttered.) Also, if they get cold, they revert to their natural state, which is hard kindergarten paste (but salted and buttered). I gladly passed down this family tradition food to my daughter, whose blood pressure skyrocketed just after eating it - just kidding. She actually liked the zucchini noodles the best after I got her to taste one, which took quite a bit of marketing on my part, but it was worth it. Of course she liked the butter/salt paste nuggets but the green beans...meh. They are fresh vegetables with no bells and whistles, after all.

"Garlic Bread Sticks" a la Sara Heck:
Ingredients:
1 Cup Bisquick
1/2 Cup Water
1/4 Cup Butter (1/2 stick)
Garlic Salt

Mix Bisquick & water with a fork and pat into a rectangle (Sara specifies 6x4 size), cut into 12 strips (I only got 8). Meanwhile, melt butter in 8x8 pan over low heat (don't forget oven mits when handling the pan...) Dredge sticks in melted butter and make sure to get all sides. Go crazy with the garlic salt. Or not - your choice. Bake at 450 degrees...That's right, all the way up there...Wow...for 10-15 minutes. Check on them often just in case. The rest of the pan will look burned (because of the excess butter), but take them out when the bottoms are brown, but not quite burned.