Salmon Spinach Linguini

It's a wonderful thing when my husband feels inspired to cook.  I mock him all the time that he can't seem to do anything simple when it comes to food, but when he does it's amazing! We had just had the in-laws over and Mark, Stuart's dad, noticed my container garden out back.  I had some spinach that was ready to go, but I hadn't realized it. Stuart and I created a recipe on the fly to use it up, and it turned out AMAZING!  My only suggestion would be to have about 3 times more spinach.

Salmon Spinach Linguini

a bunch of spinach

1 cup shredded parmesan

3 cloves garlic

2 Tbsp butter

white wine

1 salmon fillet

1/2 package linguini

1/3 cup pine nuts

olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Before you do anything else, you need to pan sear your salmon.  Melt the butter in a medium hot pan, and sear the salmon on both sides until it's cooked all the way through.  It should brown nicely.  Set it aside on a small plate.  It'll be room temp when you eat, but it's still fabulous. 

Put your pasta into salted boiling water according to the package directions.  While the pasta is cooking, toast your pine nuts in a dry pan (you can see them above), and saute your chopped garlic.  Stuart cooked the garlic in the same pan and same butter as the salmon until it had just started to brown.  It was golden and delicious, but not like the apple. (True foodies will get that one.) 

Right before your pasta is done, stir all the spinach into the pasta water.  This will wilt the spinach, and if you've salted the water, it will season the spinach as well. Strain the pasta/spinach combo, and return the pasta directly to the pot.  IMMEDIATELY add your shredded parmesan and drizzle on some olive oil.  Stuart used a micro plane so it was extra fine and melted perfectly.  Also stir in the butter and garlic.  Plate your pasta in a pretty little bowl, top with half the salmon fillet, and sprinkle on the pine nuts. Voila!  An amazingly simple, healthy dinner.

.....what did we do with the wine, you ask? Yeah...we drank that.

A Christmas of Firsts

This year was a special year for us.  It was Corgan's first Christmas, our first Christmas in our first house, and the first joint Piedfort/Bankey Christmas.  It was a mad house, but we had such a great and wonderful time.  Everyone showed up early for Christmas breakfast (Dad made biscuits and gravy!), and we sipped on mimosas.  I made my tarragon scrambled eggs, and apparently Philip (Stuart's brother) had to ask if they had gone bad.  He'd never seen green flecks in scrambled eggs before! Poor Philip.

My brother Chase and I makin' bacon!

Everyone brought their gifts over to our place to open, so of course we had way too many packages everywhere!  There were nine adults and the first granddaughter, and that makes for a lot of gifts.

Here's a picture that needs no explanation:

Check out the shirts!

The best time of the day was watching Corgan!  She had a crazy bad cold, so she wasn't in the greatest mood, but she was precious none the less.  She was actually more excited for the toys than the boxes and paper, which I hear is not normal.  She got a stocking stuffer of Grover from Sesame Street that sings Jingle Bells when you push his belly.  She couldn't get it to sing herself, so every time he stopped she would get all mad and do her fake cry.  It was adorable!

Corgan, her Grover, and Grandma

And lastly, just for fun, here is a peak into the crazy life that is the Piedfort/Bankey clan:

Painting Fun

When we bought our new house, we had completely fallen in love with the layout, size, and yard, but we hated the colors.  One front room was mint green, the dining room powder blue, the kitchen pale yellow, and the living room was all white with one dark blue accent wall.  Did I mention it's an open floor plan and there were floral stencils everywhere?  Upstairs we had one bedroom with neon orange walls and neon yellow trim (I am not kidding), another room with periwinkle blue/purple with bubble gum pink (again, not kidding), and then our loft was the piece-de-resistance: orange with green and yellow daisy and sun stencils!  We spent the first few months painting the two bedrooms and the entire downstairs, a solid two days tackling the loft (which is Corgan's playroom and I'll share that with you in a separate post), and most recently Stuart and I tackled the stairwell and upstairs hallway.

You can see a 'before shot' of our boring hallway.  The yellow on the right is the accent wall in the loft, and the tan color is what we chose to paint it, and, yes, the beer is a necessity to any painting project.

 We had to get a paint roller extender in order to paint our stairwell...

...and we put it to good use!  This would be Stuart listening to 'Disco Stick' by Lady Gaga.  I love this man!

 Here is the final product.  You can see that we kept the white trim, and painted every surface in tan.  The change is amazing.  There is nothing like a fresh coat of paint.

The stairway was not fun to do, seeing as we had to reach over the edge from above to paint under the trim.  It was awesome seeing Stuart lean over with his monkey arms to paint the corners that I couldn't reach.

....I think I'll have to share a video of monkey arms with you at a later date...

Pepper & Shrimp Fra Diavolo

Ever have a day where you know that you have an ingredient in your fridge that will go bad if you don't use it ASAP? This happened to me the other day with some bell peppers.  I knew I needed to cook them, but I didn't have a lot of stuff on hand.  On my way home from picking up my daughter from day care, I was picturing all the food I had in my fridge and pantry (which wasn't much), and came up with Pepper & Shrimp Fra Diavolo.  Stuart and I love anything spicy, and when we first moved into our home his mom bought us red pepper flakes from Costo.  I still have the huge jar even though we use them all the time, so I decided to put them to good use.  One of the other blogs I read (http://fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com/) shows great pictures of the ingredients before she begins to cook.  She also does these great mid-cooking shots as well, but I'm so not going to show you all the complete mess that I make when I cook :)

Pepper & Shrimp Fra Diavolo

 

12-15 Count Frozen Shrimp

3 Bell Peppers of Any Color

1 Can Diced Tomatoes with Basil & Garlic

1/2 Box Rotini Pasta

Parmesan Cheese

Put the noodles on to boil according to the box, and yes, I do add salt to the water.  Whenever the noodles are done, strain them and drizzles a little olive oil over them to keep them from sticking. In the meantime, cut the bell peppers into strips, then half them.  I sauteed them in butter (yummmmm) until they were starting to get brown all over.  Next, I added the can of tomatoes and the pepper flakes, salt, and pepper to taste.  Once the mixture came to a simmer, I added the frozen shrimp directly to the sauce until they were pink all over.  I served the sauce over the noodles, and topped it with freshly shredded Parmesan. I learned from my Oma Betty (grandmother) that real Parmesan is the only way to go!

Pepper & Shrimp Fra Diavolo

It turned out pretty well for being a made-up recipe. As my husband put it, "It was subtly spicy, and surprisingly light." You could put the sauce over brown rice or spaghetti squash if you were watching the health factor.

Meeting Santa

Merry Christmas to all!  What a wonderful morning: it's Corgan's first Christmas, both the Bankey and Piedfort families are on their way over to celebrate the season, share a scrumptious meal, and open gifts we gave each other.  Instead of writing a full blog, here are the adorable pictures that Corgan took with Santa for the very first time.  We had to wait at Bass Pro for almost an hour and a half, she didn't fuss once (who would in Bass Pro?), and took the most beautiful Santa photos!  People were literally gasping at how well she did.  I was, and am, one proud Mama!

Re-Starting at Fits & Starts

Sooo...after a long hiatus, Fits & Starts is restarting.  Don't really know why, but I've had a big urge to begin blogging again.  I write newsletters and update websites for a living, but having my own is a lot more fun (even though I'm the luckiest person on the planet to have the job that I do!).  Since the last time I've blogged, my husband and I have moved twice, bought our first house, got promoted, moved offices, and had the most perfect child in the world.  We've been busy. 

Lately I've been on Pinterest a lot (ultimate time-suck), and I keep getting steered toward these awesome blogs for recipes, crafts, home decorating, and child-raising (I use this instead of child-rearing, because that just sounds weird).  I decided that I would revive Fits & Starts and continue journaling about life at the Bankey household.  I'll include recipes, crafts, home decorating, and child-raising.  Basically, anything I feel like putting in here :)

As a quick introduction:

Corgan Lee Bankey at 11 Months

Stuart, my wonderful husband with Corgan at 6 months

Me, Haley, with Corgan at 6 months