Since I went home for Father’s Day weekend, I decided to take full advantage of the occasion and the home food resources to make a meal for my family.  Also, I took a trip to the local Chapters yesterday, where I got a few new cookbooks, including Canadian Living’s Make It Tonight cookbook!!  Oh happy day!  I also got two other new cookbooks, which I’m sure I will be mentioning in future posts, so stay tuned to find out more about those.

In honour of this new cookbook purchase, I decided to take two recipes from it to make tonight’s dinner.  Something noteworthy: I tried black olives tonight for the very first time, as they were an ingredient in the pasta I made.  As you can see below, I entered my quest to try olives optimistically…

…BUT, that smile very rapidly deteriorated into a cringe, when I decided that I wholeheartedly DO NOT like olives.  At least I tried them right?  All that was left on my plate at the end of the night was a sad looking pile of olives.  Apologies Veggie Gods.

Okay, so back to the meal…for the main dish, I made Pasta with Peppers, Tomatoes and Olives(yuck to the olives, YUM to the rest of the meal).  It was kind of odd to have a pasta dish without a semi-dominating sauce, but this was something new that took advantage of some amazing, fresh produce.  Also, I love home-time… we had fresh parsley!!  This never happens!!  It was great.

For dessert, I made a Layered Apple Cake, also from the Canadian Living cookbook.

It had a delicious graham cracker crumb base and top, with a soft, scrumptious apple cake centre.  SO GOOD.  Add some ice cream, and I have officially reached my foodie heaven.  I seem to be starting a trend…whenever I bake at home, it always seems to be a pasta dish and a cake crumble.  Perhaps I will try my hand at BBQ-ing next time?

Back to Ottawa tomorrow, and back to my student house hole-in-the-wall-kitchen.