Eat for Health, Eat for Fun: GETTING FANCY

Sunday Evening

Cocktail Hour
Prior to dinner preparations Zach and I enjoyed some games and wine tasting together. I was so excited for him to try the new varietals I had! (The two bottles I bought yesterday + the blueberry wine from Tennessee!) We decided a blind taste test would be fun to have him do, so I assembled the blueberry, vista rose and pastures mark:

With a 1/2 oz. pour in each little glass...

He tasted and had to assign a cork to each one...

He was right! Granted it wasn't that difficult of a taste test, but was fun to have him do :)

I started off with a 3 oz. pour of vista rose and we discovered we could play a version of bananagrams with Scrabble pieces!! :) Zach beat me by ONE measly letter.

Kitties wanted outside so badly... :)

Played a couple of other games combined with a 3 oz. pour of blueberry then made up one of my dips!

I wanted the dessert dip for after dinner tonight, so I used the neufchâtel cheese (it called for cream cheese but I lightened up the recipe by using this!) + truwhip (best profile for a whipped topping I have found! Still not a huge fan of whip topping in general but once every blue moon can't hurt) + creme brûlée bag mix to create a dip! Of course had to sample it with half a cinnamon graham cracker :)

Zach pouring wine into a beer tasting glass! Blasphemy!

Had a total of four 3 oz. pours throughout the evening total.

Supper
I was so excited about making tonight's dinner! So excited in fact, that I invited Mom and Dad to join us! After all they leave for Hawaii in just SIX days (such a bummer that our time there doesn't overlap with them at all) so we needed to spend some quality time together before they go.

I made them do a taste test when they got here but had them do it with their eyes closed, much more challenging!

They both picked out the catawba port but both confused the rose and blueberry!

On to dinner! This recipe was NOT from a health food magazine/cookbook. I actually tore it out of a Food Network Magazine and it is chef Jamie Oliver's "Baked Camembert Pasta".

I had never used (or eaten?) camembert cheese before. Turns out I wasn't eating it tonight either. Whole Foods was out of their camembert boxes so I got a round of Goat Brie instead that is super comparable. The recipe is now "Baked Goat Brie Pasta."

The cheese prep:
-unwrap the cheese and place it back in the wooden box it came in
-score a circle into the top of the skin and lift it off and discard
-put a bit of garlic, pepper, EVOO and rosemary on top

Then I placed the cheese box on a tray and cooked it for 25 minutes in the oven.

Meanwhile I cooked my whole wheat rigatoni (the whole wheat was my attempt to make this minutely healthier ;) ) and added 3 cups of spinach to the pot at the very, VERY end of cooking. After draining I returned the pasta and spinach to the pot to wilt the spinach. Drizzled with a bit of EVOO and topped with grated parmesan cheese (REAL cheese, not shaker fake stuff).

After the pasta is plated and the ~~camembert~~ goat brie is done cooking you have two options- drizzle the melted cheese on top of your pasta or, to quote Jamie, "pop the box of cheese on the table and let everyone help themselves to a lovely, gooey spoonful."

We helped ourselves to spoonfuls

To accompany the pasta we had simple salads made with mixed greens. Mine had cherry tomatoes, carrots and peppers and was dressed in the tiniest bit of EVOO + honey + my new gourmet sea salt that I bought today! The pasta was remarkable. That cheese felt restaurant worthy, not kidding.