Chickpea & Tomato Ragout

I make dinner most nights after I get home from working all day so quick, easy & tasty food is ideal. We ate this chickpea & tomato ragout with some grilled fish (cod, I think) but I could make a meal out of this alone. It's reminiscent of pasta e fagioli (pasta with beans) minus the pasta. It's ready to eat (prep to finish) in about 20 minutes & you can eat it hot, room temp or cold.

Simple Tapas: Spicy Baked Chickpeas

I love tapas for two reasons. One reason I love them is that they remind me of my first date with Chris. He took me to a great tapas restaurant. That was my last first date :) The other reason, which Chris didn’t know on our first date is that I love to taste different things. So I love ordering tapas. Granted there is a lot of work that usually goes into these tasty little dishes even if you’re just getting a taste. I found this quick & easy tapas dish for spicy baked chickpeas that from Claire Robinson’s 5 Ingredient Fix show (sigh I miss that show - so if you’re listening Food Network Gods please bring it back!). It’s a super easy snack to make & have on hand when guests come over for the holidays. Plus, this dish is primarily chickpeas so you can secretly provide some nutrition for your guests too!

Fall Salad with a Sweet & Spicy Oil-Free Dressing

It's finally feeling like fall out there.  We've been eating a lot of squash at our house as of late. It's a real fall like veggie (or is it a fruit? it has seeds so I think it's a fruit).  As you know I usually just roast up some squash to keep on hand like I did in this post last week.  This time I incorporated butternut squash into a hearty salad with a sweet & spicy oil-free dressing that I will definitely be making again.

Hearty Minestrone

Seems as though the beginning of this week will be almost springish but, le sigh, January will return by the week's end.  So with the big chill on the horizon I see lots of warm soups in my near future.

Try this minestrone soup on for size, I did. (Photos & recipe after the jump!)