Liz bacon pasta

So I don't exactly think of this as a recipe exactly.  I feel like there should be another word for a description a of how to make a food when you can pretty much throw in anything you want and it almost always turns out good.  this is more of a suggestion of stuff you can put on pasta with cheese and it turns out awesome!

when me and my hubby just got married, this was a super common dish at our house due to it being fairly cheap and easy to put together.  It starts with bacon (which is never a bad way to start a recipe in my mind) and adds in veggies so that it can at least be a little healthy...  In this recipe feel free to use any vegetables you like (or have on hand) as well as subbing olive oil for the bacon grease if you're feeling healthy. 

Bacon Pasta
1/2 pound of bacon
I added a chicken breast sliced into strips this last time, but it's completely unnecessary more of a filler cause i had extra people than a usual ingredient for this.
1 large onion sliced into strips
1/2 large red (or yellow or orange) pepper sliced into strips
about 5-10 mushrooms sliced (however much you like, or you can leave them out)
1/2 bag frozen broccoli (you can use fresh, but I never do, cause I never think to buy it in the produce section and I think I would forget about it and it would go bad in my fridge)
about 1/4 cup frozen peas (optional.  I mostly just put these in to add another veggie)
Feel free to add any other vegetable you want in here or sub things out. I'll add tomatoes if they're in season, or summer squash
1 pound pasta (spaghetti or linguine is generally what i use, but feel free to use what you have)
about 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
Cook bacon in a large skillet. when bacon is done to your liking remove from pan.  if using chicken cook in the bacon grease till done then remove to the same place you're keeping your bacon
Put water on to boil and cook pasta. While pasta is cooking  put onions and peppers into pan with bacon grease, cook over medium heat till, soft add mushrooms broccoli and peas and cook till everything is hot. Drain pasta when it is done.  Put into large bowl or back into the pot used to boil the pasta add all the veggies. Chop or tear apart the bacon into the pasta toss together till evenly mixed.  add Parmesan cheese toss again. serve with extra parm and good bread if you have it, but it will stand on its own if you don't.

Periodic Table of Cake- Jenna

My friend, a Chemistry grad, had a birthday, thus there was a very big need for a Periodic table cake!   I googled pictures of cakes for a while, which is always a good start when brainstorming ideas for cakes, and couldn't figure out what I wanted to do.  I decided upon using Starbursts to create all the elements.  You want to make a 13X9 inch cake (or bigger; I will explain later) in any flavor of choice.  Let completely cool, then, and this is important, level off the top, otherwise your periodic table will not lay right (it'll bulge in the middle).  Then you can ice it with any icing you wish as well; I would do a white or chocolate; not a colored icing because the starbursts add a lot of color by themselves. 

The difficult part is next- unwrapping 102 Starbursts!  I bought 2 bags of the same type of Starbursts, so you will have some extras, but one bag is not enough.  This is the breakdown I used for my cake: 13 Pink, 40 Yellow, 37 Orange, and 28 Red- but this all depends on the distrubution of colors in the bags of Starbursts, so make sure and count

them before deciding on which color to use for each section.  I bought

Wilton black decorating icing, which is wonderful because black is a

difficult color to dye icing and you can put a tip directly onto the top. 

After you have written on all of the Starbursts, which doesn't take as long as you would think, then you just have to put them on top of the cake.  Back to the issue of pan size, if you can snag a bigger pan, do it!  There are 17 rows of elements on the periodic table, and obviously, only 13 inches of the pan.  So, I had to cut a loooooot of the Starbursts so that they all fit.  If you can save yourself this trouble, it will be worth it!  It all comes together pretty quickly, and then you have the nerdiest cake imaginable!  It's pretty easy, and a real crowd pleaser.  :)