I got told this 5+ yrs ago by one of ny favourite teachers and it still resonates w me so much

Sunday night, I ate leftover pizza. Monday night, I ate leftover pizza. On Tuesday, the leftover pizza had run out, so I ate a few breadsticks and went to sleep. Hi. I'm a food blogger. And I've been over cooking for the past week.

Tonight was looking pretty bleak, and I almost went to bed hungry for two nights in a row, but at the last minute, I decided to put a stop to the madness. I threw together a quick dinner of pasta and a few of the leftover vegetables I had in my refrigerator. It was great. Definitely better than leftover pizza any day of the week. 

Cooking dinner doesn't have to be a complicated, elaborate ordeal. Often times, simple really is the way to go. 

Ingredients (makes two servings):

2 cups of pasta (I used rigatoni)

1 zucchini

4 - 6 sundried tomatoes

1 cup of baby spinach

1 large garlic clove

1/4 cup of feta cheese

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of salt

pinch of red chili flakes, or to taste

Make the pasta:

Fill a medium sized pot with with water. Add the salt and cook over medium heat with the lid on. While the water is boiling, finely chop the garlic. Cut the zucchini into small cubes and the sundried tomatoes into thin strips. 

When the water starts to boil, add the pasta and cook according to the directions on the package, stirring occasionally. I cooked my pasta for about fifteen minutes. 

Once you've started cooking the pasta, add one tablespoon of olive oil along with the garlic and red chili flakes to the pan. Cook over medium-low heat for a minute, and then add the zucchini and sundried tomatoes. After about five minutes, add a tablespoon or two of the pasta water to the vegetables and continue to cook. The vegetables will be cooked by the time the pasta is done. 

Drain the pasta and add it to the vegetables along with the baby spinach. Cook for a minute, turn off the heat, and add the feta and remaining tablespoon of olive oil. Toss the pasta, the vegetables and the feta together and forget about ordering takeout again.

The new year is coming, and that means one thing. Not champagne toasts (admittedly, I'm a huge fan). Not the hundred resolutions that'll be broken by mid-January (maybe that's just me). Not even the countless number of best of/worst of/year in review lists (although they are kind of nostalgic and fun). 

It means that it is time for me to start cleaning out my refrigerator. 

There's just something so satisfying about starting the year with everything fresh. Out with the old, in with the new. A clean slate. A healthy and happy beginning. 

Plus, I'll soon be on vacation for a few days, and throwing out a small fortune's worth of food is pretty annoying. 

Today's clean-out list: butternut squash (possibly from Thanksgiving, but I'm hoping not),  pomegranate seeds (definitely from Christmas), onions (from the inner depths of the back of the refrigerator), and two kinds of cheeses. Everything came together to make an amazing pizza. AMAZING. A little modesty will be resolution one hundred and one.

Ingredients: 

1 ball of pizza dough

2 - 3 red onions (about 2 cups thinly sliced)

1 butternut squash (about 3 cups chopped)

1/2 cup of pomegranate seeds

1 cup of feta

1/2 cup of goat cheese

2 tablespoons of olive oil plus enough for the pizza dough

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Make the pizza:

After the dough has risen for at least an hour, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Thinly slice the onions and chop the butternut squash. Toss the vegetables with the olive oil and salt and roast on a baking sheet for at least half an hour.

While the vegetables are roasting, roll out the dough in the pan and let rise on the stove top, covered in plastic wrap or a towel. 

After half an hour, turn the vegetables in the pan, put the dough in the oven (remove the covering!) and cook for another fifteen to twenty minutes. Meanwhile, measure out the goat cheese and crumble or slice and cube the feta.

Spread the goat cheese over the dough, cover with the vegetables, and pomegranate seeds, and then top with the feta. Cook for another fifteen to twenty minutes, until the feta has started to melt and brown. Whatever you don't eat today can be frozen for later.

When I first started cooking for myself, Sundays were really tough. I'd sit there on my couch, eating the last remnants of that week's leftovers or some type of warmed-over takeout and think back to all those Sunday dinners with my parents and the abundance of pasta, meatballs, and all sorts of epic deliciousness that accompanied them. You are probably stifling a tiny sob of pity right now imagining the sadness of the situation.

But at some point, I realized that just because I was cooking for one didn't mean those big Sunday-style dinners had to end. In fact, aside from the supreme joy of spending a few relaxing hours alone in the kitchen, it meant that I'd have a head start on the week with enough leftovers for at least one, if not two meals. 

Thanksgiving is this week, and I need a head start like you wouldn't believe. 

These stuffed shells take a while to make but are a great Sunday-style meal. They keep well in the refrigerator or freezer and can be made partly ahead of time. Using mashed butternut squash and collard greens in the filling lightens the dish considerably, which, given the food extravaganza to come, is not at all a bad thing. 

Ingredients (makes about twenty four stuffed shells):

one small butternut squash (about three cups, peeled and cut into cubes)

one bunch of collard greens (about four cups - any dark, leafy green vegetable would work here)

4 - 5 cloves of garlic

one 35 ounce can of whole, peeled tomatoes

one box of shells (you will use about twenty-four)

one 15 ounce container of part skim ricotta cheese

1/4 cup of grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

2 - 3 tablespoons of olive oil

1/3 teaspoon of cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg

salt as needed

Make the Filling:

Boil a large pot of water Meanwhile, peel the butternut squash, cut in half, and remove the seeds. Cut into half-inch cubes.

Add the butternut squash to the water and cook with the lid on for about half an hour, until the butternut squash is tender when pierced with a fork. Drain the water and let the squash cool.

While the butternut squash is cooking, wash the collard greens and remove the stems. Cut the greens into inch-wide strips and cook over medium heat in a pan with one and a half tablespoons of olive oil. Stir frequently, and after about ten to fifteen minutes, the collard greens will cook down to about a quarter of the amount. Remove the collard greens from the pan, wrap them in a paper towel, and squeeze out any remaining liquid. 

In a food processor or blender, chop the collard greens along with two or three cloves of garlic until the mixture has a fine, pesto-like consistency.

Using a fork or potato masher, mash the butternut squash until it is smooth. Add the collard green mixture, along with the ricotta and one quarter cup of the grated cheese and stir until well combined. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Make the pasta and sauce:

Chop the remaining garlic and cook it in a large pan with one tablespoon of olive oil and a pinch of salt over medium heat for a few minutes. Add the entire can of tomatoes and break them apart with the edge of a wooden spoon. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for at least twenty minutes. 

Meanwhile, boil a large pot of salted water. Add half a tablespoon of olive oil and the pasta shells. When the water is boiling, cook the pasta, stirring frequently but gently, until the shells are soft, about ten to fifteen minutes. Drain the pasta and then rinse with cold water until they are cool enough to handle.  

Assemble and bake the shells:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Line a 9 x 12 baking dish with about a cup and a half of the sauce. Remove the filling from the refrigerator. Working in an assembly-line fashion, stuff each shell with about two tablespoons of filing and place in the dish.

You should end up with about eight rows of three shells each. Top with the remaining sauce and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese. 

Bake at 450 degrees for 45 minutes. Eat, enjoy and congratulate yourself on getting a head start on the crazy week ahead. 

If you live in an old apartment, this time of year is the worst. It's like Goldilocks with heat. Too hot for the building to crank it up and too cold for there to be none at all. Right now, I'm wearing my sweatshirt and ski socks, and even though I just heard a tiny creak from the radiator, I'm not optimistic. 

Nobody likes a complainer, so I'm making soup. Something warm and hearty. Something with white beans. And the leftover spinach that's slowly wilting in my refrigerator. 

Who needs a space heater when you've got instant warmth in a bowl?

Ingredients (makes about two servings):

1 onion

2 cloves of garlic

1 can of cannellini beans (15 ounces), drained and washed

3 cups of water

2 cups of baby spinach

1/4 cup of grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

1/4 teaspoon of crushed red pepper

1/4 teaspoon of rosemary

1/4 teaspoon of salt

Make the soup:

Chop the onion and garlic and drain and rinse the beans from the can.

In a large pot, cook the onions and garlic one tablespoon of olive oil, along with the crushed red pepper, rosemary and salt over medium heat.

After about ten minutes, when the vegetables are soft and fragrant, add the beans. Cook for another ten minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Add the water, cover halfway and cook for another fifteen minutes. Let cool, and then blend until smooth and creamy (I used an immersion blender and pureed everything right in the pot). Reheat the soup uncovered in the pot over medium heat and add the spinach.

Cook for another five minutes, stirring frequently, until the spinach has wilted. Stir in the grated cheese, cook for another minute or two and eat.

A half-pound sack of spinach is no joke. I know, because I had one in my refrigerator for the past week thanks to my local CSA.  It seemed like an insurmountable quantity requiring a serious plan of action. Every day, I would open my refrigerator and stare down that mountain of green stuff taking up half of the second shelf. It was intense, and I almost gave up. Finally, I came up with two options: salad for a month or spinach calzones. 

It was not a difficult decision. 

Calzones are like folded and stuffed pizza pockets. You can fill them with tomato sauce and cheese, cooked ground meat, and sausage, but I like them best with spinach. They are meant to be rustic, the type of food you eat with your hands, so don't worry if yours aren't perfectly even or if a little cheese oozes out of them while baking in the oven.  They'll still be really good.

The amazing thing about spinach is that it cooks down to nothing. The four cups I had left in the sack after using some for a weeknight salad or two cooked down to just half a cup in a few minutes.

My family always adds a pinch of nutmeg to greens and cheese. It's weird, but it makes lasagna, ravioli, and these spinach calzones taste just a little bit better. It's kind of a secret, so don't tell anyone I told you. 

Ingredients (makes six small calzones):

1 ball of pizza dough

1/4 cup of flour

4 cups of raw spinach ( or 1/2 cup of cooked or frozen and defrosted)

2 cloves of garlic

1 and 1/2 cups of part-skim ricotta (15 ounce container)

1/4 cup of grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

a pinch of nutmeg

2 - 3 tablespoons of olive oil

Make the dough:

Follow the recipe for pizza dough and let rise in a bowl for at least an hour, until doubled in size. Coat a large wooden surface and a rolling pin with most of the flour.

Place the dough on the board, sprinkle the remaining flour on top, and roll out with the pin until the dough is about a quarter inch thick and measures a 12" by 18" rectangle . To ensure even thickness, rotate the dough on the board and flip over from time to time. 

Cook the spinach:

(Skip this part if you are using frozen or cooked spinach): Heat 1 - 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan over medium heat along with the red pepper flakes. Add the spinach and cook, tossing frequently, until the spinach has wilted completely, about five minutes. Let cool.

Regardless of the type of spinach you are using, make sure to wrap it in a towel or paper towels and squeeze out the excess water. 

Make the calzones:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Finely chop the garlic and add to a bowl along with the spinach, ricotta, grated cheese, and nutmeg. Mix well to combine the ingredients for the filling.

Cut the dough in half length-wise and then cut each half into thirds, so that you have six evenly -sized squares. Measure a heaping quarter of a cup of filling onto each square of dough. 

Fold the dough over the filling and then fold, crimp and braid the edges so that each resembles a half-moon. Repeat for the remaining five.

Put the calzones on a baking sheet and brush with one tablespoon of olive oil. 

Cook in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Rotate the pan in the oven and cook for another 25 minutes, until the calzones are golden brown. Let cool at least ten minutes before eating. Freeze some for later.