New favorite.

I am a saver. I like to save things (not so much money, unfortunately, though I'm trying to change that). One of the things I like to save is recipes. I rip them from the pages of magazines, then pop 'em into page protectors and put them in binders. At this point I have three: one for meat, one for desserts, and one for everything else. Sometimes when I need an idea for dinner and M suggests enchiladas for like the 871st time that month, I turn to the binders. This week, I came across a page with a gorgeous photo:

 Photo credit: Tina Rupp; http://www.rachaelray.com/recipe.php?recipe_id=2784

It's herb butter and goat cheese linguine with fresh tomatoes. In a slight departure from how I normally operate, I took the recipe and only used it as a guideline. Kinda like how pirates treat the rule of parlez; it's more of a guideline, really.

So, 6 tbs of butter? Try a stick. Apparently I forgot how to read. Shallots? How bout I just cook it in a pan that had previously held sausage and peppers and onions, and hadn't been washed in between? And since tomatoes aren't in season yet, let's try some 4/$1 local-ish zucchini. So what if the ends are a bit wrinkly - cut it off, dice up the good stuff, and throw it in the butter with some chives and thyme from pots out back.

I really wish I was eloquent enough to describe how this smelled. Browned butter, fresh herbs, zukes... I nearly swooned.

But back to my loosely-followed recipe. 8 oz of goat cheese, crumbled became 5 oz. of herbed goat cheese. 2 cups fresh tomatoes became the remainder of last year's dehydrated sungold tomatoes. And dinner looked like this:

(I struggled with good lighting and 3 animals who are very interested in eating my food to take this photo) This was delicious, truly. And I added some prosciutto to it at lunchtime the next day, which made it even better. Next time, I'm adding more veggies, a touch more salt, and about a cup more herbs. I'm just about ready to have it again tonight!