Bringing a bit of Italy home to our table

March 7, 2018

After spending ten days in Italy last month, all I want to do now is learn to make homemade pasta, cappuccinos, croissants, and authentic Pasta e Fagioli.

If anyone has the most amazing recipes for any of these, please feel free to pass them along!

Over the past few years, I have made a Pasta e Fagioli recipe, but when I ordered it for dinner one night in Orvieto, the recipe I make looks nothing like this:

It was cold in Italy and all I wanted was a bowl of soup for dinner. This was so amazing! Rather than being tomato based like I was used to at home, this was more like a white bean soup filled with homemade pasta.

So I began to search the internet for a recipe that might be similar and I was happy to find one and made sure to add it to one of my Pinterest boards.

This week, I added the ingredients to my grocery list:

Today was the day to give the recipe a try:

This recipe came together pretty quickly. Since I have not tried to make homemade pasta yet, this is probably as close as I am going to get to the soup I had in that restaurant in Orvieto.

Have you ever tried Pasta e Fagioli like this?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Homemade Pizza Sauce

May 27, 2014

This past week I tackled - Homemade Pizza Sauce

One thing my family loves to eat is pizza, especially homemade pizza! We keep our pizza pretty basic: homemade pizza dough, homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, little bit of cheddar cheese, and Parmesan cheese.

On the day that I have made up a batch of sauce, of course we will have pizza that night for dinner.

I bet you are wondering how I freeze up the rest of that pizza sauce. So glad you asked! I take individual snack size bags and put in about 1/4-1/2 cup of sauce. I just kind of eyeball it, no magic here. Then all of those individual bags, I place them in one big freezer bag.

Homemade pizza sauce, ready for the  freezer — Homemade pizza sauce, ready for the freezer

Then that one big freezer bag hangs out in my freezer with all of that wonderful pizza sauce, ready for the next time we have homemade pizza. One nice thing about storing the pizza sauce in those individual snack size bags? Makes thawing quick and easy.

Yes, we do like to get pizza from our favorite pizza place in town. But having the ingredients on hand for homemade pizza makes it do-able to have a homemade dinner in about an hour.

To tackle this week - Letters from Scrap Fabric

One project I have pinned is to make Letters from Scrap Fabric. Since I have quite a bit of scrap fabric, I thought this would be a good way for me to use up some of my scrap fabric and make a fun project to sell to earn money for my next Compassion trip.

Think this is something you would like to purchase? Be sure to like my Facebook page, Gifts from Our Little Corner, where I am selling homemade items to earn money for my Compassion travels. Then check back next week to see how I tackled this project!

What project are you working on this week?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Civil War dress progress

May 20, 2014

Last week, I started working on a Civil War dress for a friend of mine. I knew I would not be able to have the whole dress finished by this Tuesday, which is okay. Some tasks take a bit longer, some can be finished a bit quicker. But making a bit of progress on some of these bigger tasks over each and every day gets you closer to the goal of finishing!

Over the next couple of days, I need to finish up the bodice and sleeves, then start working on the skirt. Hoping I can finish this big project up in the next day or two so my friend can wear it to a Civil War event this upcoming weekend!

In addition to working on this dress, today I need to put together a batch of pizza sauce.

When I cleaned out my freezer a couple of weeks ago, I realized we were out of homemade pizza sauce! We like to have homemade pizza about once a week, usually on Friday nights. I will share more about our pizza next week, so stay tuned!

What project are you tackling this week?

Capture Your 365

August 28, 2013

Five for you this week!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/80 sec

Day 229 – Pink: Pink is not my color, blue is. My home is decorated with lots of blue and I have a lot of clothes that are blue. It is hard for me to find pink things around my home. It was getting to the end of day and I remembered that I still needed to capture a photo from my day. A cloud filled evening sky usually has some shades of pink, so I stepped outside and saw this lovely summer evening sky with just a few shades of pink. Perfect!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/2.2, 1/50 sec

Day 230 – Measured:Pinterest is a wonderful way for me to store recipes that I want to try (I even have a whole board devoted to recipes I would love to try!) No more piles of clippings from magazines collecting dust in my home. But every now and then, there is a recipe I find that sits on my counter just begging me to give it a try. And since I had just about all of the ingredients at home on this summer day, I decided to make it!

ISO 100, 50mm, f/14, 1/80 sec

Day 233 – Spin: Kelsey and I were meeting a young mom from church at one of our local parks. Since I knew they had swings, I just had to bring my camera along! She wasn’t spinning too quickly, so I knew I didn’t need too fast of a shutter speed to freeze the motion. This was my favorite one out of the bunch. I love how her braid is ‘flying’ out away from her. And I love that my 13 year old daughter is not ‘too old’ to swing for me.

ISO 400, 50mm, f/16, 1/320 sec

Day 234 – Abundant: Kelsey and I were able to spend the whole day with friends up in the foothills today. My friend and I were able to talk all day long while the girls played, chatted, swam, and made fun videos. It was a wonderful day! On the way home, I knew I wanted to capture the sunset. We pulled over a couple of times to get just the right shot. I love the sun flares on this one.

ISO 200, 50mm, f/6.3, 1/80 sec

Day 235 – Local Landscape: As I have mentioned before, there are some days when we just stay home all day long. I could have driven around town to find something away from our home to photograph for this prompt, but why not take a picture of my own backyard since it is part of my local landscape and a place I enjoy spending time. Especially reading over in those red chairs with my iced coffee.

Have you started to Capture Your 365 yet?