November | 2010 | Left Coast Contessa

Per my last post, the past few days have been Stree-vember. But never fear, I have not yet surrendered to frozen meal. Lets be real: I’ll never eat a frozen meal unless it is a Barefoot dish I mass produced myself. I just can’t do TV dinner. Finals are depressing enough without depressing food. However, I have been playing around with how to make quick versions of my favorite dishes. I have a couple in mind I hope you’ll enjoy!

Remember last week when I made Squash Pasta Bake? Well it was really good and last Monday I really wanted some. Issue: I had so much work to do. I could only spare about 30 mins to cook and eat. Solution: I made a quicker dinner with all the same ingredients.

First, I roasted squash, eggplant, onion, and garlic at 425 with salt, pepper, and EVO for 20 mins.

While the veggies are roasting boil one serving of brown pasta and drain. Benefit of this approach? Lots of time off to do reading!

Once the veggies are done roasting combine them in the pasta pot with pasta, a small amount of EVO and cheddar cheese (clearly the best part of the dish). Then I topped with prosciutto. Yes, impending finals brings back my love of prosciutto.

Yum. This is pretty similar to the original dish but was executed in a fraction of the time. Cheese and prosciutto is the ultimate comfort food, right?

Hey there blog world. Sorry there are no pictures yet from Halloweekend. I used Catie’s camera (because I need to find a receipt from last January in order to get mine fixed) and I’m having a problem transferring the picture off the camera. But I will deliver at some point. I promise!

Today is the 1st of November so happy November. Yesterday after the race I had an anticipatory panic attack about the entire month of November. The last day of November is the last day of class so that means that it is time to gear up for finals. In law school this includes outlining, practice test taking while keeping up with the usual work load. I know it will all get done but thinking about the volume of what has to be accomplished and the fact that my entire grade hinges on my ability to do it well is very stressful.

I’m lucky to have a lot of exciting social events in the next few weeks but at the same time, they take away from my ability to complete work. That being said, my social life is taking the backseat for the next two months, the blog might as well. Don’t worry, I’ll still be here all the time but I might not be posting everyday like I usually do. Or maybe I will. The blog is a great source of stress relief for me so who know.

I did want to take time to complete a questionnaire that Kaitlin tagged me in on her blog so here it is!

What was your motivation to start blogging?

My motivation to start blogging was Law School! After one semester I needed a creative outlet for my thoughts and a place where I could be and interact with other people around a topic that wasn’t school. Two weeks into first semester Left Coast Contessa was born.

If you had to sum up your blog with five words, what would they be?

Girl enjoys butter, cocktails, running.

Do you have any embarrassing blog-related moments? If so, spill!

Not that I can think of. I have embarrassing cooking moments like starting a small kitchen fire or forgetting to put flour in cookies. Sometimes I make random typos that aren’t edited out, like putting questions marks where they don’t belong.

What is a dish you’ve been too intimidated to try?

After pasta, nothing scares me.

But there are some challenging thing I want to try like layer cake, bread, and sushi.

What is your favorite dish to cook for others?

Anything from the Flour cookbook because everything from the Flour cookbook is good.

What was the first healthy living, food or fitness blog you discovered?

Carrots n Cake! Followed closely by Healthy Tipping Point and Eat, Live, Run

Do you crave sweet or salty? Or both? Or neither? But if you say neither, I’ll assume you’re lying…

Both! I have chocolate every night and I love love love salt! I love food and I basically crave everything.

What is your favorite restaurant not in or very close to a town in which you live or have lived?

Tough one! I love Le Pamphlet in Paris, France; everywhere in the entire country of Turkey. In the US I love the ice cream at Scoops in Edgartown, MA (on the vineyard). I also love the seafood on Marco Island in Florida.

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Hope you enjoyed the questionnaire! Thanks to Kaitlin for tagging me on it!