Penne tossed with Roasted Asparagus and Balsamic Butter

So, I have discovered that there is a website for pretty much everything under the sun! Including a entire website dedicated to asparagus. It's really very funny that inanimate objects can have their own site, which makes me picture a spear of asparagus sitting behind a computer telling the world one line at a time how delicious and nutritious it is! Anything and everything you would really want to know about asparagus can be found at MAAB (Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board). I won't go on and on about it, but if you don't have time or happen to miss farmers markets in the Tulsa Area, there is a new store which opened in Jenks (official grand opening this Saturday, August 11) called Green Acres Market. You should really go and drool over their fresh produce and delicious deli! With all this being said, my recipe to share is Penne pasta with roasted asparagus and balsamic butter. Now, a note before cooking up this very refreshing, unique tasting dish is that it calls for a whole stick of butter. I however (along with a lot of the people who commented) did not use the entire stick. You can also substitute the asparagus for broccoli or squash (already tried it...it's also delicious)! So let's get cooking...

Get your oven heating to 400 degrees and get ready for a very easy meal! Snap one pound of asparagus into one inch pieces. Place them on a baking sheet and toss with one tablespoon of olive oil, 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt and 1/2 of a teaspoon of pepper.  Place them in the oven and cook for ten minutes. In a small sauce pan simmer a half of a cup of balsamic vinegar (get ready for the whole place to smell like the vinegar). You will simmer the vinegar until 3 tablespoons remain. Stir in one half teaspoon of brown sugar (I actually used a little more), and a dash of pepper. Remove the pan from the heat. In another pot, cook the Penne as the package instructs, drain and toss with about one stick of butter, the vinegar, the asparagus and 1/3 cup of Parmesan cheese. Presto!! It's a very delicious meal with very little work, and trust me it is hard to stop yourself from eating bowl after bowl until you're licking the very last of the sauce off your plate!

I did not get any pictures this time :( My camera was malfunctioning! However the site you can find this recipe on is Food and Wine and here is the run down....

Penne with Roasted Asparagus
1 pound asparagus 
1 tablespoon olive oil 
2 teaspoons salt 
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper 
1/2 cup plus 
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar 
1 pound penne 
1/4 pound butter, cut into pieces 
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving 

~Happy Cooking~

Photo from selfsufficiencyclub.com

A quick shrimp and rice lunch plate

Alright, I'm not a professional chef by any means and normally it is hit and miss (more miss than hit) when I get in the kitchen and try to create something new. However, this time around I made a quick lunch for us before we headed out to the lake and it was great! So I'm going to share it with you and you can tell me what you think! Deal?!

I started with one bag of shrimp (I believe it was large sized) and heated up about a half of stick of butter in a skillet. While that was simmering in the skillet, I chopped up a couple green onions and minced two cloves of garlic and threw it in the pan. I cut a lemon in half and squeezed the juice all over the shrimp. While that was simmering and smelling great, I did a run through of my spice cabinet and decided to go with red pepper/cayenne pepper. I added a couple dashes (by dashes I mean I shook the spices over the shrimp twice). When I make this again, I will probably add more than a couple dashes because it was hardly spicy at all.

I left that on low and went to work looking for a side. I was excited to find that I still had an asparagus bundle in my fridge so I cleaned them up, cut the ends off and tossed them in another skillet. I added maybe a tablespoon or two of butter and a dash of kosher salt. I threw in a couple dashes of onion salt and garlic powder and let it simmer until the asparagus was warmed through.

Now to top it off, I made some white rice while the shrimp and asparagus stayed on low heat and then served the shrimp on top of a bed of rice (whole grain rice would be great too, I just didn't have the time to wait on it to cook). This was incredibly delicious, super easy and kept me satisfied until dinner time!
Hope ya'll enjoy this new recipe and let me know if you try it! I always like to hear back about the things we cook up!

~Happy Cooking~