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Eight Valentine's Day Pasta Recipes

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The best Valentine's Day date night starts with pasta! Here are my favorite Valentine's Day Pasta Recipes to make at home.

Are you celebrating Valentine's Day this week? Weekend? Ever? Never?

We technically celebrate our dating anniversary on V-day, but after a gazillion years together we....I have no idea...anymore. Mainly because I travel a lot this time of year (well, in a regular year, which this is not) and two times we had a newborn at Valentine's Day, and while I'm cool with a dating anniversary and a wedding anniversary as an excuse to hang out, it's definitely nothing mandatory for us anymore.

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Best Spaghetti Meat Sauce Recipe

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My favorite slow cooked Sunday sauce recipe! This is a version of Sam the Cooking Guy's Bolognese recipe featuring tons of veggies, beef, and a few special ingredients. The recipe is super simple and simmers for a long time to develop a perfect Sunday gravy flavor and OMG the house smell. Best ever.

sunday gravy recipe

Hello and hi, let's finish this year with an uber bang. I've been talking with a lot of people recently about things that I make that never change, staples that I think are so handy for everyone to be able to make all the time. A good salad dressing, one kind of bread, that sort of thing.

This easy Bolognese sauce is a new-to-me recipe that I've been working on for a few months. I watched Sam the Cooking Guy make this Bolognese on YouTube, and I loved the method, ingredients, all of it. The key to the flavor in this Bolognese is that we use stock, wine, and milk to flavor and enrich the sauce so that it's super hearty without being creamy by the end.

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Lobster Pasta With Lemon Cream Sauce

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Channeling major Kate-Winslet-The-Holiday Christmas pasta recipe vibes with this super easy creamy lobster pasta recipe! I buy frozen lobster tails when I see them on sale and keep them in the freezer for extra special meals when we need cozy + comforting without spending a ton of time on dinner. I have a lobster mac and cheese recipe too for even more creamy dreamy lobster!

lobster with pasta recipes

Oh hey, December. Didn't see you there with all the Thanksgiving pandemic election fake news bs inundating my brain and screens.

But, December it is, and December means we need some festive meals. Right? Right. Let's get right into this lobster pasta cream sauce of joy situation.

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Bacon Cheddar Skillet Pizza with Caramelized Onions

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You know that when you make pizza in a cast iron skillet it's done in 10 minutes, right? 

Bacon Cheddar Pizza from funnyloveblog.com

That means you can be EATING PIZZA in ten minutes. 

Beck's favorite food HANDS DOWN is pizza. When we are talking restaurants is always what she "suggests" (shouts for), what she'll gobble up the fastest, and what she'll do almost anything for, behavior-wise. Yes, we bribe with food. I'm cool with it.

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Creamy Mushroom Parmesan Pasta

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Dinner! 

Honestly can it just always be pasta? Last week Jay was out of town and I had some leftover noodles from another dinner, then I made this easy creamy mushroom pasta, AND we had some leftover pizza. So save for some wilting lettuce that I ate for the earth and this pasta, I didn't cook at all and ate carb-heavy nearly every meal. It was the best, and this week we've eaten lots of extra veggies already, so lay off me. 

This pasta, for sure, is SO worth it. We're talking huge flavor with just a few ingredients, thickened milk or half and half instead of heavy cream, and vegetarian with a healthy hit of parmesan for flavor and protein.

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Easiest Eggplant Parm

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Oh, early week dinners. They can sometimes feel sad. Maybe we're trying to do better by our bodies after a weekend, maybe we're hurried with work and activities and life, maybe we're just out of inspiration and tired.

Easiest ever eggplant parm to the rescue! Marinara + cheese is a pretty universally loved combination, and I make versions of this all the time: throw random veggies in with marinara and cheese, top with something crunchy, bake until tender, done.

This version with eggplant ends up almost creamy when the eggplant softens because we slice it with a mandoline. If you don't have one just slice the eggplant as thinly as you can - or buy a new kitchen tool, you'll use it a ton once you have one!

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Buttery Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Spinach

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One of my favorite recipes with sweet potato gnocchi from Trader Joes (or wherever)! This super quick dinner recipe is perfect for any greens + gnocchi you have and comes together in just 20 minutes or so. Butter, sage, and garlic make a quick sauce, and dinner is on the table ready to be eaten in half an hour!

recipes with sweet potato gnocchi

Obviously healthy enough for what we're trying to do this January.

One thing I've been trying really hard to do since having Will is find a balance between 1. complicated meals that I love to make but take forever and trash the kitchen and 2. takeout. I know that seems dumb, but I'm never the one to look for "super quick and easy weeknight meals!" I don't mind eating at 9pm, I love cooking, and it mostly works for me.

Until, of course, it doesn't. Will has been taking a longer stretch of sleep (like...two hours, don't get too excited) in the late evenings, so if we eat at nine and go to bed around 11pm I'm missing a lot of that good sleep. Then homeboy wakes up sometimes every hour at night, I'm exhausted and forgetful and irritable and honestly the fun crazy dinners are mostly not worth that.

So the quest is to find quick and easy dinners that are actually GOOD, and this is definitely that. It's sweet potato gnocchi (I love the sweet potato gnocchi from Trader Joe's!) that boils in four minutes, during which time we saute some spinach with so.much.garlic. aka my favorite way to eat spinach. Then the gnocchi gets a brown butter + sage bath because we've earned it, and dinner is ready in FIFTEEN MINUTES, tastes like something from a fancy restaurant. You need this in your life, trust me.

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Spicy Sausage Vodka Sauce

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HIHI how was your Christmas, or holiday, or break, or week, or weekend?

We had....all of those things. This was the first year that I can remember having all of our sisters in town from both of our families. We had family outing after family outing, happy hour(s), dinners out, gift exchanges, and a great deal of time spent discussing WHY Will insists on spitting up so much, and how on earth he's gaining any weight. It's a mystery, and a very gross one. I've never done so much laundry in my life.

Jay is mercifully, blissfully off the rest of this week, and I'm caught between wanting to 1. organize everything and let him hang out with the kids, 2. do absolutely nothing, and 3. send them all away so I can actually catch up on work for once in my life. I'm THINKING that there has to be a balance between those three things, but likely I'll spend a ton of time thinking about it and not a ton of time accomplishing the things I really need to be doing.

What I will be doing, though, is cooking. I love cooking on holiday weeks, two or three meals per day and some snacks, trashing the kitchen, listening to music, all of it. This vodka sauce is one of my favorite weekend/holiday meals, and it's perfect for this time of year - maybe even for New Year's Eve if you're staying in! It takes a bit of time because the sauce gets roasted in the oven, but the steps are simple and the results are SO worth it. We have spicy sausage, tangy vodka and tomatoes. Extra garlic, absolutely. After the sauce roasts we pink it up with heavy cream and toss it with pasta or zoodles if you're starting your New Year's resolutions early! Honestly the sauce is so good I could eat it plain.

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Sausage Wild Rice Soup

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This wild rice soup has sausage in it for extra oomph and flavor in the chilly months! This is one of my favorite meal prep soups and can be frozen as well - make a double batch and enjoy the gift to your future self when you thaw out your already-made dinner! This soup is thickened with cornstarch instead of a flour to make it a gluten free soup recipe. HIGHLY recommend a batch of no-knead bread to go with this.

It's FREEZING here. 

No, but really. Multiple nights under 30 degrees F this week = the natives are LOSING it. We live in South Carolina, after all. The south. Warm. Stuffy. No fall. Lots of summer. Sweat. Humidity. You get it.

So when it's this cold (and, yes, I know some of you have way colder lives than this, I understand how different climates work), and dark at 4pm, and we're decorating for Christmas between snuggling with our newborn and battling our toddler, we totally completely absolutely for sure need a perfect easy soup to get us through the winter.

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30-Minute Beef Minestrone Recipe

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This minestrone recipe is done in just half an hour and features a perfect all-in-one combo of veggies, ground beef, and pasta. The broth is tomato-based, super savory, and almost all of these ingredients can be stored in your pantry or freezer for minestrone in a minute! Note: A loaf of no-knead bread never hurt a thing with this one.

Happy week of Halloween! We have to have a soup this week, right? I adore soup all the time for one very good reason: leftovers are the best of all the food groups. Anything fried gets mushy, bread-based stuff never reheats well, microwaved leftover veggies are satanic...you get it. Soup always works fresh or reheated, so in these little-kid years if I have time to cook extra on the weekends or early in the day I make soup and then am DONE for a meal later on, usually in the evening when everything has gone to hell, toddler-behaviorally-speaking. 

Last year our go-to soup was this sausage kale number, which is still probably one of my favorite things I make ever. This basic minestrone recipe is on the same playing field with the combination of veggies, meat, and noodles that work so well together. Green beans and beef to me are super delicious, and the base of the soup is tomatoes, stock, and garlic for extra flavor. You could absolutely make this vegetarian with beans instead of beef, or use both for an extra shot of protein. 

Let's soup! 

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Quick + Easy Focaccia

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I couldn't wait. As promised, after we watched the first episode of Salt Fat Acid Heat (why are the episodes not in the order of the words in the title?), all I could think about was making focaccia. Ok maybe more all I could think about was eating focaccia, because the filming of the episode was so lovely and the language used with the imagery was just so compelling, I NEEDED to experience salty, oily-in-a-good-way bread ASAP. 

The obvious hiccup being that I 1. don't bake and 2. have literally never made anything with yeast. Ever. And if we're being honest, 37 weeks pregnant with a messy house and full-time toddler and part-time job is really not the time to get all LET'S TRY NEW THINGS. Having a second child is new enough. Eating bread was the goal. Luckily, I had a package of pizza dough in the fridge that had all but tripled in size in the few days it had been in my fridge. Tripled! I bought it on a whim thinking that I'd make pizza for Beck as a treat, but I hadn't done so yet or told her about it, so I took to the interwebs to see if other people make focaccia with pizza dough. 

THEY DO. 

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Fall Sausage Ragout with Zoodles

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This fall sausage ragout has sweet potatoes and kale for a perfect fall dinner. I love it over zoodles, but you can use pasta or even polenta as a base for this yummy fall meat sauce!

Is it too long if there has to be commas in the title of the recipe? Don't answer that. 

HAPPY MONDAY. Did you sleep extra this weekend? We didn't, because the cutest little alarm clock wakes up at 7am and apparently it's bad form to let a 2 year old tend to herself in the morning, much as I think she'd prooooobably do ok with the task. We did, though, eat a ton of yummy food, hit up two parks, handle some laundry, and try a new bulgogi place, so weekend events definitely happened, if not much rest. 

The balance between work and getting ready for baby and trying to enjoy THIS life right now is a real struggle, as it is for every single human, and this dinner gives us the balance we can't always manage in our regular life. Zoodles for health and low carb. Sweet potatoes for...carbs. And a superfood! Sausage and parm for yum, kale for your bod. This sausage ragout is made pretty much like a regular marinara: meat then veggies then simmering, add extra salt and crushed red if you need more spice. I cook my zoodles for about 2 minutes right before we eat to wilt them just a little bit, but you can absolutely eat them raw for even more texture. 

PS raw zoodles last pretty well in the fridge, so if you have a bunch of zucchini you can spiralize them all at once and keep them in a container for easy access. I find that the spiralizer is like the food processor - it makes everything super quick and easy but getting it out feels like climbing Everest some days. Which is dumb, but true. So make a bunch at once and eat them all week!

Let's zoodle. 

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Parmesan Chicken Cutlet

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Today we are going to be talking about fried chicken. 

Not fried chicken that you have to heat up a vat of oil for, though. Easy weeknight fried chicken that you make right on the stovetop, that doesn't make a huge mess or tons of oil stink, and that is perfectly crispy and delicious every single time. Perfect for a Monday, practically a health food, that sort of thing. 

I know fried chicken on a weeknight isn't something we do a ton (it's super rare for us, although I wish it weren't so), but once you have the method down it really doesn't take a ton of extra time or effort, and the results are SO rewarding. This particular chicken cutlet is wonderful on its own with a side dish or two, but is also yummy sliced over a salad or doused with some marinara for a quick chicken-parm type of meal. Or OR! You could put it on a sandwich and that wouldn't be a bad thing at all. 

A note on portioning here: Once you pound a chicken breast (which is really a half breast, but the regular cut from the grocery store, boneless and skinless) to a thin thickness and bread it, it can seem pretty huge. If you have big appetites you could certainly make one chicken breast per person, but I find that one chicken breast is more than enough for two servings, especially with other things on the plate. Of course, you can also make ten of these at a time and have leftovers. Make ten for sure. 

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Weeknight Meatball Bolognese

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HI. 

How was your Labor Day? Our was GREAT minus a few things. 1. my back stopped functioning on Sunday morning so I'm on day three of super painful spasms and no I can't stop picking up my toddler and no I can't take medicine because of the fetus and no I refuse to stop wiping my ass or any other normal thing that hurts. Because everything hurts. 2. Beck peed on our bed last night because she giggled too hard so we had to wash the sheets at 8pm after a long weekend but also we got clean sheets out of it? There was also a criminal incident on our street in the middle of the night last night that yielded us sleeping about three hours total. 

OTHER THAN THAT. The holiday was great. We did some fun family things but mostly hung out just us, watched enough TV that it felt lazy but did some cleaning and organizing and walked a ton. I also made an entire Thanksgiving dinner which was suuuuuper delicious but weird because it's still 90 degrees here. But! It's done and the fall decorations are out, which I'm not mad about. 

It's during holiday weeks that I often find my self really craving things that don't taste like traditional American food, if that makes any sense at all. Asian flavors, Mexican flavors, and hell yes to Italian food all the time. This is that! It's on the weeknight train of things that are easy to make but is a teensy bit special because we're calling it bolognese instead of spaghetti. This was inspired in real life by two things: we came home from vacation with a half bag of frozen meatballs from my sister-in-law, and then we celebrated our anniversary at a fancy Italian place. I ordered bologese there and it had these big chunks of carrot that were cooked down in meat sauce and I LOVED them because veggies should be with pasta in the name of balance. So meatballs instead of meat sauce, extra carrots for your health. Everything simmers super quickly and you can definitely eat in under an hour OR make this on a weekend or random free afternoon and it'll keep great in the fridge for several days, so dinner can be done in the time it takes to cook pasta. 

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Bacon Basil Panzanella

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It's the first day of school! Beck left this morning to great fanfare and WAHHHHH MY BABY and also guilt because honestly who needs school at age two and a half so if she stop school after high school that's still sixteen more years of freaking school and also I'M FREE and also thirty weeks pregnant today so not free for long, sucker, and I'm hungry. 

It's also 90 degrees here because of course it is. Climate change is a myth. 

But we may as well soak it up, right? Even people who hate summer love summer; the nostalgia of freedom from school and longer days, more daylight, and freaking perfect fresh summer produce. Spring and fall greens and gourds are just nothing compared to tomatoes, corn, watermelon, and fresh herbs, so I'm going with it as long as the weather stays this warm. It's my payment for excessive heat while pregnant - watermelon. 

So today we're using tomatoes and basil that are still everywhere in panzanella, aka bread salad, aka of course we should have bread in our salad. The dressing base is actually juice from the tomatoes, then we have salt, sugar, and shallot to round out the most delicious dressing. The bread gets crispy in the oven while bacon gets crispy on the stove, and honestly by the time we factor in the bacon and bread we should be just eating this for breakfast, shallot breath be damned. 

I'm not above it. 

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Corn Risotto with Roasted Tomatoes

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Because everything should have corn and tomatoes in it right now, you know? It's true. 

Today! Monday, ugh, sorry. Another summer week! Yay, awesome! The first day of school???? for some, how. HOW. And, the week of our anniversary! It's on Friday, and it's been 5 years. A milestone! We are going to paint a room to celebrate and Jay might upgrade his phone because it doesn't stay charged for more than a few hours. Big stuffs. 

Another big stuff is this risotto, for real. It's so perfect for this time of year, cozy from the creamy rice and fresh with corn and tomatoes that are still so good. It works in warm or cool weather, and if you've never made risotto the secret is to stir between sips of wine so...you can definitely do it. Risotto gets a bad rap for being hard to make, and it does take some time, but can still be done in 45 minutes and isn't hard at all. Perfect for an anniversary dinner or a weeknight where you have a few extra minutes to cook. 

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Fresh Tomato Butter Sauce + Spaghetti Squash

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Raise your hand if you recently had surgery and ate all of the things while not moving for nearly a month!!!

Jay is raising his hand right now. We've had the weirdest few months - we were all three sick in increments so basically someone in the house was sick for over a month, then Jay traveled for work, then had surgery, and in that time frame we decided that CARBS AND DAIRY GOOD and KALE BAD. Which honestly emotionally was exactly what we needed, but still. Can't do that forever, sad aging bodies don't work well that way. Now, let me be super clear that I think Jay looks no different and he's maintained a super duper great outlook on health and food in 2018 so far, BUT, I definitely get that sometimes after a slump it feels great to eat especially lighter or healthier meals. For us, that means less/no red meat, fewer carbs, and smaller portions. We aren't cutting out anything exactly, but more fish + veggies + vegetarian options feels great to us right now. With cheese on top. 

So to continue our Whole30-is-over-but-white-carbs-aren't-great way of eating, spaghetti squash is back in the house with a fun vengeance, because we both love it. The idea for this fresh sauce came from Pinch of Yum, which I read all the time and adore, and serving it over spaghetti squash seemed like a no-brainer. The way to make this delicious is a teeny bit of butter in the sauce, parm on top, and LIBERAL use of salt and pepper. Unsalted anything isn't great, but an unsalted healthy-on-purpose meal is just the most sad. Salt for president! 

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Quick Pasta Primavera

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Talk about eating seasonally. The last salad I showed, this pasta, and a soup I have coming up have all the same flavor base ingredients, and we change up the dish based on our desires. Need lighter? Go for the salad. Dinner with friends? Pasta for sure. Late season cold? The soup's on its way, I promise. 

The flavors in question are garlic + green veggies + fresh herbs + lemon. In this case we add cheese and spaghetti for a super quick and flavorful pasta. There isn't a huge amount of sauce, just enough to coat the pasta and veggies and make everything nice and silky. 

I made this a few weeks ago for two of my best friends; we managed a kid- and husband-free dinner and it was SO much fun. We also accidentally talked until almost eleven which is way too tired for us at this stage in our lives (they're both pregnant), but I blame that on the pasta too. It lends itself to slow twirly bites between sarcasm and giggles and definitely begs for seconds. 

It's full of green veggies and is vegetarian, so seconds are practically mandatory. 

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Quick and Easy Skillet Chicken Parmesan

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Over/under on another version of chicken parm that doesn't involve tons of frying and ingredients and steps? I'm WAY over on this one, and think we should have a variation of any kind of parmesan meal every single week, but what do I know? Welcome to the best one skillet quick and easy chicken parmesan recipe you'll find. 

cast iron skillet chicken parmesan recipe

I know that everyone likes chicken parmesan, that's what I know. This version was a quick dinner solution last week, and we gobbled it up. It's healthier than most chicken parmesan recipes but doesn't sacrifice anything in terms of flavor, and it's super quick because it's all created in one cast iron skillet. We build a tomato sauce right around seared chicken cubes, then bake the whole thing with cheese and a few breadcrumbs just for a few minutes to melt the cheese and cook the chicken all the way through. 

I will say this is definitely not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but the flavors more than make up for it. Tangy tomatoes, tender chicken, creamy cheese, crispy topping: like I said, I'm way over. 

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