tomato & caramelized onion grilled cheese.

I am in a constant inner turmoil over meat. On one hand, I love it and many meals in which it is an instrumental ingredient. Can I picture my life without juicy burgers, tender roast chicken or heaping plates of my nana's sausage-filled stuffing at Thanksgiving and Christmas time? Not easily, no. I'm also a person who cries over touching animal videos and interrupts my own showers to save a centipede who's crawled up our drain, running downstairs with a towel, conditioner-coated hair and a glass to put him outside. And have you seen those things? They aren't even close to cute and fuzzy. 

tomato pie.

This past summer, on a six-week-long backpacking trip through Southeast Asia, I had extremely limited time on the internet. Instead of spending my precious hours in crowded internet cafes updating Facebook or sending long emails to friends and relatives, I wandered the streets, beaches and temples, met people, drank too many buckets and discovered new restaurants and treats. Near the end of the six weeks, though, I was craving comfort food from home. Hard. (Despite their best efforts, a burger and fries doesn't quite taste the same over there - at least in the cheap spots I was eating, where local food is what's good on the menu.)

capellini with shrimp and creamy tomato sauce.

While I've been crazy about good food for as long as I've been eating, I just recently started to put an effort into cooking (maybe when I came to the sad realization that eating out for every single meal while living on my own in Toronto wasn't an option unless I was planning on camping in McDs.) I don't have a lot of time to cook, but I'm obviously not going to waste that precious time making crap to mindlessly shovel in my mouth in front of the t.v.


Enter this pasta recipe that my boyfriend and I discovered while browsing the ten-minute-mains on gourmet.com (thank god for ten-minute-mains good enough for gourmet to put its name behind!)


Over time we've tweaked it perfectly to our liking by tripling the garlic (it was a little bland for me with the dose the original recipe calls for, just don't sit too close to me) and using canned, fire-roasted tomatoes for a bit more of a complex flavor. 


Recently, I jazzed it up a bit for my parents with fresh basil and shaved parmesan for a simple al fresco meal. My dad, who's currently attempting a "diet" and initially requested a miniscule portion could be seen scraping the empty pan it was cooked in with a spoon and proclaiming that had he been served the exact same dish at the Union Square Cafe in New York, he would be thrilled silly.


For those who don't know my father and his love for that restaurant, this is a huge compliment. Make this!