Me and Al, we go way back. However, Al is...ahem...a bit fattening, making it something I don't indulge in all the time. The problem though, I love Alfredo sauce; the creaminess, the richness, it's just good comfort food.
So I did a little a searching for a lighter Alfredo sauce (don't laugh) and came across one developed by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich. She is widely regarded as the first lady of Italian cuisine, an acclaimed chef and restaurateur. She of course has a fabulous fettuccine Alfredo recipe with all the heavy cream and egg yolks you could want. However, she does explain how to make a lighter Alfredo sauce, one that can be indulged in more often.
The key to a great Alfredo is organization and timing and of course cooking the pasta properly.
Pasta needs lots of water, for 1/2 pound of pasta, as in this recipe, you need 3 quarts of water. And don't ever add oil to the water, it makes your sauce slip right off. For maximum flavor, add the pasta directly from the boiling water to the cooking sauce and simmer together for a few minutes. The pasta will absorb some of the sauce and will intensify in flavor.
If it were up to the kids, ice cream would be a freezer “staple”. My list of staples includes; lentils, quinoa, brown rice, black beans, cheese, nuts – all kinds, tahini, coconut milk, and the usual cast of characters to creating whole meals. Ice cream is not on my list. 
If you’ve noticed a theme here (other than pies), you’ll notice a love for the nuts+pie combo. Perhaps it’s a contrasting textural thang, or maybe it’s a way of rationalizing eating so many pies (i.e. nuts are healthy, right?) At any rate, this pie is a tropical breeze in a pie shell, using macadamias for crunch on top of sweet vanilla pie filling. It’s a good one from Epicurious. Enjoy!
The refrigerator is suffering from in-between celebration emptiness. A lonely cabbage sits there with a nice head of garlic, a elderly chunk of fontina and some grated parm. And yet it’s enough to create a world of comfort because I have a package of Pizzoccheri purchased several weeks ago.
This is a funny little recipe. It only has four ingredients and requires no baking. I used to make this cake when my boys were little and it always amazed me. I was looking through my recipes the other day for something and came upon this and had fond memories of it. I can't even remember where
I got this recipe from anymore, but it's a winner.