Yeahhhh for more wedding pictures being shared with us!! It has been fun to see a lot of moments that were captured from different vantage points!! These three are from the rehearsal dinner and they sum up the relationship soooo well!! You know, me reacting to a situation and Kyle just always laughs at the situation/me.
Tonight I kept with the post wedding tradition of making a new dinner from Pinterest. Funny – I had to go to the grocery store this morning but had no idea what I wanted to make while making my shopping list {and nothing sounded good since I was not hungry} so today consisted of two trips to the grocery store. And after staring at Pinterest for WAY too long this afternoon, I decided on a Tortellini Spinach Bake.
I took out the bacon because it just sounded weird. If you want the original recipe, head HERE!
12 oz bag Barilla Cheese & Spinach Tortellini (find them in the dry pasta aisle)
3 cloves garlic, pressed in garlic press or finely minced
2 Tbs flour
2 C milk
¾ tsp kosher salt
⅛ tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp dry basil
¼ tsp red pepper flakes (1/2 tsp or more if you like spicy)
1 medium lemon
2 C loosely packed fresh spinach, roughly chopped
¾ C grated mozzarella cheese, divided
¾ C grated Parmesan cheese, divided
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill a large stock pot with water and bring to a boil. Add tortellini and cook according to package instructions.
In separate pan – a big pan - Add garlic to pan and cook until fragrant and tender, about 1 minute. Add flour to pan and stir with a whisk for about 1 minute. Slowly add milk and continue to stir with whisk until smooth. Add salt, pepper, basil, and red pepper flakes and bring sauce to a simmer.
While sauce is heating, use a micro plane grater or a fine-holed cheese grater to zest lemon [yeah – I did not do this I just squeezed in like half a lemon]. Then cut lemon in half and remove juice. [didn’t do anything that is in the rest of this paragraph] Add 2 teaspoons zest and 1 tablespoon lemon juice to sauce. (Note: I really love lemon so I added this to my tastes. If you don’t want as strong of a lemon flavor, I suggest cutting it down to 1 teaspoon zest and 2 teaspoons lemon juice) . Continue to stir until thickened, 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat.
Drain tortellini and place back in stock pot. Reserve 1 tablespoon of the cooked bacon and add the rest to the pasta mixture. Add spinach, 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese. Add sauce and gently stir to combine. Place pasta mixture in an 8×8 or 9×9 baking dish and top with remaining 1/4 cup mozzarella and 1/4 cup parmesan.
Cover pan with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for an additional 5-10 minutes, until cheese on top is melted and pasta is bubbly throughout. Remove from oven and cool for 10 minutes before serving.
And I will give it 3 stars out of 5. Only because I think it had too much spinach in it. Kyle really liked it, so I will of course cook it again – but I think I will modify it one of two ways. Either swap out the cheese and spinach tortellini for just the cheese kind OR I will just put in less chopped up spinach. I think it may be easier to swap out the tortellini type, but who knows.
Oh and hello from the babies!! Kennesaw is a little more alert than Mr. Mulligan is. He hates the camera, but still says hello!!!
I REALLY thought that March 24, 2012 would mark the end of me being a victim of my wedding planner/coordinator’s ….. inability to keep things straight/do things/whatever. And I am going to say that I do not know for a fact that this new development is her fault, but I am going to say despite her telling me she “mailed it” … I just don’t know.
Our Marriage License. It is MIA. Well…. was MIA. Kyle had to go to the courthouse and get a new marriage license that we then had to send off to our minister in Tennessee and once we get it back, Kyle is going to WALK it into the courthouse to ensure we at some point become legally married.
You see… all this “fun” started on March 25th. I noticed that I did not have my marriage license in the plastic bins of all our other wedding stuff. So I emailed our planner asking where it was? She then told me she had it and she would take care of mailing it. {me being the control freak, wish I had know this and I could have said no no no, I will mail it myself. But I didn’t know} … I trusted her. I thought, how hard can it be to put something in the mail? I had even put a stamp on it thinking our minister had to mail it.
Well.. we got back from our honeymoon and then a week passed and NOTHING. So I call the courthouse only to learn that we had to mail in a check for a certified copy of the application and license for name changing purposes. So I did just that – on a Tuesday. The following day my phone rang and it was the Probate Court telling me that “we have no record of the marriage” …. SAY WHAT?! So I of course, called the planner, who assured me that she mailed it after the wedding.
Right.
So. I gave it a few days. And still nothing. That is when Kyle spent his lunch break getting a new marriage license ($10). Then I had to UPS the replacement to our minister with a packing slip back to us ($50 total) …. and then the like $50 it cost us to get the marriage license in the first place …. so one license to GET MARRIED AND MAKE IT LEGAL has cost us $110. UN.REAL.
And of course… I cannot “blame” her … or make her pay for all this chaos because she claims she mailed it. But it is still annoying and seeing how despite my email address having my name in it she still sent me the invoice & wedding plans for the wrong bride … I cannot help but wonder if she misplaced it in the chaos of the wedding day.
We joked that we would just go to the courthouse and get married but we already put me on his insurance with the wedding date of march 24th …. so we’re just going to wait it out. At some point I will be legally married and be able to change my name. Just not anytime soon.
So! The day after Kyle and my wedding we were talking to his step-mom Cory and she mentioned that since the wedding was over I would have so much more time on my hands and I needed to find a new project. ….well attacking the wedding room would for sure be a project in itself {and yeah. I am still working on that.} but I decided to take take my LOVE for Pinterest and make that into a project.
And well, Kyle and I were spending a lot of money eating out on the weekends and we want to get our spending under control so we can start saving more and saving for our first house. So… Sundays are now “Pinterest Recipe Day” in our house.
Last weekend was kind of a dud. But tonight – oh so good. I made a Spicy Chicken Rigatoni dish and is was delish! So delish I wanted to share the recipe with the few readers I have – because it was quick and easy and can for sure be a weeknight meal. And the best part is that most of the ingredients are things that are very common in houses.
Total Disclaimer so I don’t get sued or anything scary like that {remember… we’re trying to save money} This recipe & the picture above came from Tastebook … but I for real do recommend this dish. It does have a little kick to it so if you’re not a fan of spicy things then you may want to pass. But, this will be made in our house again.
The best thing about Facebook and Weddings is that all the pictures taken from friends and family get posted to Facebook quickly!! So…. here are some of my favorites!
My dad walking me down the aisle. Kyle and my entrance into the reception. Me before the wedding!
Wedding vows and our pathetic sparkler exit! (The sparklers wouldn’t light!!!)
Two of my ultimate favorites… my dad walking me down the aisle and then Kyle and me walking out!
