Random recipe finds and recommendations

Dinners with just Sparky and I are always difficult; while I'm grateful he's such a hardy dining companion, there's something about cooking for just the two of us that has me scrambling for ideas on the internet more often than not. I thought about posting on the "what are you making for dinner" thread, but then I realized that I'd like a thread of stuff we've culled off the WWW.

For instance, today I realized we had a half-bag of penne that I needed us to eat as it was barely enough for two servings - certainly not enough for when Dad is home. I'm really sick of our standard pasta-tomato-sauce-sausage routine, so I searched "penne." After an endless google search that yielded about a million versions of penne alla vodka, along with a few southern "penne with chicken" recipes, I decided to re-try my search on epicurious, and came up with a wealth of pastas. The second hit caused me to curse: penne with hazelnuts and green beans - I had just seconds before eaten our last handful of hazelnuts! I dispensed with a number of recipes involving cream and prosciutto, found a wealth of interesting recipes using broccolini (which I didn't have) and finally found this:
Bag-O-Salad Penne!
Score! It was delicious and beautiful - and Sparky liked it, even better! We didn't even have the correct type of bag-o-salad, but the one I had contained arugula and some red oak lettuce which worked out just fine. IMO, the pine nuts were crucial, but they're a pantry staple for me.

(BTW - for those of you who are single - this would be a really good one to impress a date. <Unless your date is the Marlboro Man.> It looks like magic - you have pasta, salad, nuts, garlic, butter and olive oil, and cheese - and you emerge from the kitchen with a hot, complete, healthy dish instead of a very one-sided cheese tray. Magic!)

In an oblation to the Internet Gods Who Saved Dinner, I offer up this thread as a repository for everyone's googled-in-the-nick-of-time recipes. I look forward to seeing what appears!

I have had the LTH forum index save me many nights.

Great idea for a thread, Michele!

There’s a certain time in the afternoon when my mind drifts from work and towards the eternal question, what am I cooking for dinner? Then I start searching the internet for a recipe.

Last night I too was alone with my son, about twice the age and size of Sparky. I had some leftover roast turkey breast and leftover broiled chicken, a few potatoes, and some leftover gravy, so hash was a no-brainer, especially since my son loves anything with a fried egg. However, I needed something else to make it a meal and thought of cream of tomato soup. Yes, he loves the Campbell’s version, but I wanted to make a better version sans high fructose corn syrup. Here’s the recipe I found, from the reliable Sara Moulton. It calls for true pantry staples—canned tomatoes, tomato paste, onion, carrot, and milk or cream—and was pretty quick to make. The soup was very good, although I found it needed just a touch of sugar to balance at least these particular canned tomatoes and double-strength tomato paste in the tube. The nicest thing was that my son cooked with me (he likes the stick blender—he’s still a boy). The second nicest thing was that I took the leftovers in for lunch today at the office.

Motorized appliances. This would be why women 200 years ago couldn't get men into the kitchen - and now we can't get them out!