Pasta Redemption

Good morning, Crushers!

The pasta debacle of the past few days has been resolved. We made the recipe last night and it was delicious! I'm so glad I found this recipe and tried it. There are a few modifications that I made because of personal preference and ingredients that I chose to use. It probably has 10x the calories that you actually need, but if you stick to the portion size, it's not so bad. I had to stick to the serving size because I'm only allowed so many carbs, but that works to my advantage!

Here is the original recipe for Sweet and Creamy Bacon and Sausage Linguine. And here's what I did:
Ingredients:
1 box of pasta (I used spaghetti since it was on sale instead of linguine)
1 pound of Italian turkey sausage, browned and crumbled
6 slices of bacon, chopped up into small-ish pieces (I could have made them even been smaller)
1 1/2 cups chicken broth (low sodium)
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp honey
1/4-ish tsp Penzey's Berbere seasoning (you do not need much at all!)
Black pepper to taste
1/2 lemon, juice and zest
1 1/2 - 2 cups heavy whipping cream
1 bag of spinach, washed and dried
3-4 Roma tomatoes, diced
As much Reggano Parmesan cheese as you want 

Directions:


Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Prepare pasta according to package instructions. Make sure you don't let the pasta cook too long or it gets gross. Plus, you're going to be adding sauce, so watch out!

In a large pan (hello favorite Calphalon pan!), brown sausage and bacon. Remove sausage and bacon, leave drippings in pan. NOTE: I was worried about this step since you're going to be adding butter and heavy cream later. Instead, I think I'd either keep the drippings or the butter, but not do both next time. By the time this was done, so was my pasta. I just drained the pasta and moved the sausage and bacon into the pot with the noodles and stirred them so they wouldn't stick together. Why make another pan dirty?!

The pasta and meat is waiting for the delicious sauce!

Stir in chicken broth, butter (see note above) and honey. Season to taste with Berbere and pepper. I left out the salt since that seemed like overkill. Continue cooking until chicken stock is reduced by half. I'm always amazed at how quickly that reduces!

Stir in lemon juice and zest. Stir in heavy cream and simmer until it coats the back of a spoon. Honestly, I probably did not wait long enough before adding the spinach, but I was getting really hungry. Plus, I was using a cool silicone coated spoon, so nothing sticks to that thing! Add baby spinach and stir until wilted. This doesn't take very long.

And here's the healthiest ingredient becoming not as healthy...

I waited until the last minute to stir in the diced tomatoes because I left the seeds in and didn't want them to get too mushy. They look prettier when they're not all mushed up.

Ready to be eaten!

Pour the sauce mixture over the bacon, sausage and linguine and stir until thick and sticks to noodles. Again, I probably did not wait long enough, but I was hungry. What can I say? Plate it up and top with as much Parmesan cheese as you'd like.

Source

This will DEFINITELY be made again at our house. I loved it and so did Steve. I thought we'd end up arguing over who was going to take the leftovers to work for lunch, but fortunately it made enough for lots of leftovers! This would be a great dish to serve at a party since you could probably make the sauce without the drippings and use veggie broth in case you have vegetarian guests. It would be so good!

Peel-a-head: I will get to make myself a whole pan of these strawberry shortcake bars. I can't wait!

Family Style Pasta - Spinach Tortellacci with Spicy Italian Sausage

Hello crushers,

I did a LOT of cooking over the weekend because we were home getting lots of things done around the house. It was nice to take down some of the Christmas decorations and organize things so we know we can find them next year. It was also nice to get to have enough time to make a gigantic meal for the Packer game so we weren't rushed to have dinner ready by kickoff. Sadly, the Packers did not continue on to the next playoff game, but we had a great meal.

See how big those noodles are?

One of the things I love about recipes is when you know you've made enough for a family to sit down and enjoy a meal without having to get up a million times to grab this or that. Family-style pasta is a great option, and this meal was inspired by two things: the awesome elderly gentleman at Glorioso's, the best Italian grocery in Milwaukee, who hands out cookies to chew on while you decide what cut of meat to order and Giada Di Laurentiis, the Food Network Queen of Family Style Pasta.

Glorioso's is one of my favorite specialty grocery stores to wander through. They will often let you have a taste of olives or something if you're really undecided. I got to try an olive stuffed with Gorgonzola cheese. It was amazing! We left the store with a wedge of Parmesan cheese, a few types of olives including the kind I got to sample, a half pound of caprese salad from the deli, a pound of spicy Italian sausage (they make their own!) and a pound of spinach tortellacci.


No, you didn't read that wrong. I said tortellacci. If you haven't already typed that in a search engine, please let me explain what it is. You are probably familiar with tortellini, the delightful stuffed round pasta. It rhymes with teeny, so it's the smallest. Tortelloni is the next size up. Tortellacci is the biggest version of this stuffed noodle. Another way to remember it is that when you say the words, your mouth has to open the least to say the word for the smallest noodle, and it has to open the widest for the biggest noodle. No matter the size, it's delicious.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound spicy Italian sausage (about two links)
1 pound spinach tortellacci, cooked according to the package directions
1/2 green pepper, diced
5-6 button mushrooms, halved and sliced
1 medium onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
2 cups of your favorite marinara sauce (we like the kind with basil or chunky veggies)
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

(Note: We made side salads to go with this, so we put some of the onions, mushrooms and peppers on the lettuce. We also snacked on the caprese salad and olives. We had plenty of leftovers for dinner the next night!).

Directions:
First, pour yourself a glass of wine because you're about to make a mess in the kitchen. Second, get out a large pot to boil the pasta in and a large sauce pan because you're going to be cooking everything else in that.

If your sausage is very lean (ours was), then put some olive oil in the pan and let it heat up. Cook the sausage in the pan browning it on both sides. You'll want to make sure that the insides reach at least 160 degrees. Normally, you cook pork to 165, but you'll keep cooking this later, so it'll finish then. I cooked up all of the sausage so that we could have it for another meal later, but you really only need the two links.

Cooking sausage - the white things are rough-chopped garlic.

While the sausage is sizzling away, dice up your veggies. When the sausage is done, take it out of pan to drain on some paper towels. Drain off all but about a half to a whole tbsp of grease/olive oil. Dump all of your veggies in the pan and saute them in the leftover oil. Once the onions get translucent, slice up the sausage into 1/2 inch pieces and put them back in the pan with the veggies. Add your marinara sauce and let that simmer until your pasta is done. Drain the pasta and add it right to the sausage and veggies. Mix it all up and let it heat through together.

Fancy "tailgating" food! If you can see it, there are olives,
mozzarella and tomatoes, and the salads on the side.

While you're doing that you can get all your plates and sides ready to go. Settle in to watch your favorite football team play or maybe light a few candles for a romantic meal or feed a family of four hungry people. Anyway you serve it, I hope you enjoy it!

Steve's Homemade Pizza

For a little while now, we have been using free meal planning printables that I found on The Nest Effect. Tiffany is a very organized gal! It has been helping us plan our meals around nights out, meetings and the holidays. It also helps us organize when to pull things out of the freezer and in making grocery lists.

Last night, Steve was up for making dinner. He has been wanting to make homemade pizza for a while, but we had never seemed to come home from the grocery with pizza dough. Well, thanks to our handy meal organizer, we remembered to buy toppings and thaw out the dough!

Steve's Homemade Pizza:
Ingredients:
1 loaf of freezer pizza dough, thawed
1/2 cup of pizza sauce (to taste)
1/2 pound pizza sausage, browned (save the other half for your wife to use in stuffed mushrooms and on her salad for lunch)
18 slices of pepperoni
5 white button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 a large onion, diced
2 cups mozzarella cheese

Instructions:
Knead dough to warm it and make it pliable. Spread dough on a lightly greased, non-stick cookie sheet until it reaches all the edges. While you are working on this, brown the pizza sausage on the stove top. This should take about 5-7 minutes. Spread pizza sauce over the dough. You can add as much or as little as you would like. Just make sure it is even. Sprinkle the browned pizza sausage over the sauce so it is even. You don't need it every where, just evenly spread out. Place the pepperonis over the sausage so they are spaced out. Do the same with the onions and mushrooms. Sprinkle cheese over the entire pizza. You can use whatever other pizza toppings you choose, but these are what we used. Bake in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until the cheese and crust edges are a golden brown. Enjoy!

Slice and serve!