Yummy Italian Pasta with Tilapia!

 So I was sitting there wondering what I should make for dinner?  Of course as usual I had forgotten to take meat out to thaw on time for dinner, but I remembered I had frozen Tilapia which can cook quickly frozen.  I was pondering this when my daughter told me she felt like having some type of Italian pasta.  I thought... can you make pasta with fish?

So I looked it up and sure enough their were tons of recipes, but none was exactly what I was wanting so I took a couple of ideas from a couple of different recipes and then I added my own ideas also :-)  

It turned out so Yummy!  So yummy in fact that my husband who does not normally like fish had 3 helpings!  And it was a nice light summer meal, but yet very filling.

I hate posting pictures of food because it does not like as good in the picture as it does in person, but I thought I better give you an idea of how it looks.

So here is what I did :-)

Ingredients

about 5 Tilapia fillets

one small onion chopped up fine

a couple of cloves of garlic minced

1 tablespoon Parsely

 1 tablespoon Oregano 

1 tablespoon  Basil

2 cans of Italian tomatoes

1/4 cup cream cheese

cup of frozen spinach

oil as needed in the cooking process

A 16 oz package of pasta (whatever you kind you like)

First bring  a pot of water on the stove to boil (for the pasta) and turn the oven on to broil (for the fish).  In a deep skillet saute onions and minced garlic in a couple of tablespoons olive oil at  medium heat on the stove.

After the onions are cooked down add the two cans of diced Italian tomatoes (or you can used Italian stewed tomatoes instead.) Next add all the herbs and let it simmer.  while that is simmering place Tilapia fillets on a shallow cooking sheet drizzle with oil and sprinkle with lemon pepper and season salt then place it in the oven to broil. (Add your pasta to the boiling water if it is ready at this point.)  I don't know an exact time the fish are done under the broiler I just keep checking them until they look moist but flakey.  Once they are done I add all the fish to the skillet mixture and mix it together (the fish naturally flakes off into chunks).  Next I stir in  the spinach and cream cheese and I let it simmer together until everything is mixed in and heated through.  By this point your pasta should be done so you drain it. Spoon the Tilapia mixture over the pasta, sprinkle  Parmesian or Feta cheese on top and enjoy!

I would love to hear back if you tried this meal and what you thought of it :-)

Life is Fragile :-)

I heard this quote at church today :-)  I really liked it, and thought I would share it with you all !

DIY Rose Wire Rings

I saw this tutorial at Handmadeology.  And I thought to myself  hmmm..... I can do that!   Or something similar to it anyway :-)   I did not have the right wire on hand, but it was about 9:00 at night (too late to go to the craft store) So  I decided to mess around with some galvanized steel wire that we had on hand in our garage, and this is what I came up with :-)

If you are interested to know how to make one yourself  here is a little tutorial of how I made them.  I feel like I am terrible at explaining  tutorials so hopefully it makes sense :-) 

These are the supplies that I used. Galvanized steel wire we had in our garage,  wire cutter and pliers, and a tube of chap stick.

First I got a piece of wire.  I am not sure how long it is.  I just unraveled two rotations from the this wire spool. maybe it is about a foot long.

I realized right away that the wire was pretty thin so I doubled it up. 

Then I twisted it to give it more stability. And happily I think it gives it a nice look with the twist.  I found that it helps to get a more uniform twist if you use your pliers. it is hard to see in the picture that I am twisting the wire, but if you look really close you can tell :-)

Once I had it all twisted I wrapped it around a chap stick tube. this is the part where it gets confusing to explain.  I placed the chap stick tube directly in the center of my wire piece

 then I wrapped the wire around the tube crossing the two ends across each other. 

Then I wrapped it around again a second time until the two ends met up again.

This time cross the ends and twist them around each other once.

Then start wrapping/spiraling them around the middle twist part.  

Keep wrapping/spiraling them around until you can't wrap them anymore. At this point you need your pliers to help tuck the ends under and I also use the pliers to shape it a little more to my liking.

And this is what you end up with :-)

I have made one for each of my girls even the 3 year old.  They love their rings :-)

I love it when I can make pretty things with ordinary stuff laying around my house!

June bugaboo book club pick

The book I chose for the month of June  is "How Green Is My Valley" by Richard Llewellyn.
  I am choosing this book because It was recommended to me recently, and I just so happened to find it at my local thrift shop for $1.00!
I love it when I find little lucky gems like that :-)  This one also happens to be a 1940 edition so i thought that was kind of neat also.  I love old books that I know have belonged to someone else and have a history! This has written inside "With love from Clarence and Fern Sept. 14th 1944."  I just Love that!

I have not read this book before so I will be discovering it along with you :-)  Here is Amazons  review.

How Green Was My Valley is Richard Llewellyn's best-selling - and timeless - classic, as well as the basis of a beloved film.

As Huw Morgan is about to leave home forever, he reminisces about the golden days of his youth when South Wales still prospered, when coal dust had not yet blackened the valley. Drawn simply and lovingly, with a crisp Welsh humor, Llewellyn's characters fight, love, laugh, and cry, creating an indelible portrait of a people.

Richard Llewellyn (1906-1983), a Welsh novelist, was born in Hendon, England, in the county of Middlesex. Before World War II, he spent periods working in hotels, wrote a play, worked as a coal miner, and produced his best-known novel, How Green Was My Valley, as well as 19 other novels. After the war, he worked as a journalist, covering the Nuremberg Trials, and then as a screenwriter for MGM.


UPDATE:  I loved this book!  It was so well written and had so many life lessons in it!  It has a lot of depth so if you are a shallow reader this book might a little more difficult. For me it was a masterpiece!