Eggplant...Finally!

Stress has overtaken my entire being. One surefire way to help me distress is watching reality television. Thank goodness there is a ton on for me to watch right now. Two reality food shows have started this week Next Food Network Star and Masterchef. There isn’t anyone on Next Food Network Star that has grabbed my attention yet. There is a woman with an absolutely horrible accent. I’ve never heard anything like it. It makes my ears hurt. Check it out just to hear that accent! Masterchef on the other hand has some interesting characters! There was a Scottish woman who was gushing over Gordon (of course I would too!) and he seemed to love her too. Some crazy bearded back woods redneck served the judges alligator. I was impressed, I miss southern food! And then there was the crazy who served sushi off of a naked woman. This confused me completely. So that’s my short and to the point recap of the reality food shows I'm watching now.



Cooking probably isn’t something I should do to de-stress. We all know that it just gets me hyper and usually pretty annoyed. Of course during a particularly stressful day, I decided it was time to try out cooking eggplant. This is my second attempt, the first being The Sandwich That Made Me Cry debacle. I found this recipe on a blog that I read daily Cheap, Healthy, Good. The recipe is Roasted Eggplant with Mushroom Tomato Sauce. There was no way I was going to try to make another sandwich. My sandwich cooking days are over! I cannot tell you how important it is to read through the entire recipe before you start cooking. When will I take my own advice?! I remembered that the eggplant had to be salted and than it sits out for 30 minutes after being sliced (I didn’t know why I was doing this, but apparently it draws out some of the bitter liquid. Very interesting I had no idea this was done!). So I paused Housewives of Orange County and sliced and salted the eggplant.


After Housewives was over I went back into the kitchen to continue with my cooking. Don’t forget to rinse off all that salt!! Thank goodness I didn’t. You broil the eggplant for 8 minutes, flipping them once. While the broiling was happening I chopped a green pepper and onion and I sliced some mushrooms. Of course since everything I do in the kitchen is very slow the eggplant finished cooking before I was done chopping. I was also pretty distracted by the ants that had invaded my living room that day (part of my stress!) and I felt the need to check 50 times or so to see if they were still there (they were and they still are! ) By now it’s was about 6:30 and I was starving. So I grabbed a skillet (heated the oil of course) and put the onions, peppers, and mushrooms in it with some garlic, Italian seasoning, hot pepper flakes, and salt. You cover the skillet and cook this until most of the liquid is gone, then you uncover and cook another couple of minutes.


Meanwhile you get a baking dish ready and spray it with some cooking spray. Once the mushroom mixture is ready you pour half of it into the baking dish, than put ½ of the eggplant layered over that, and add some ground pepper. Spread half of the tomato sauce onto the eggplant, and add half of each of the cheeses (I used mozzarella and feta). Then you go back and do the same thing again (like lasagna), but don’t add the mozzarella cheese this time. Now you have to bake this and that’s when I realized the huge mistake I made! This thing is supposed to bake for 60 minutes! Are you kidding me?! I turned my eyes to the clock and it was 7!! Yikes I wouldn’t be able to eat until 8. This is why you MUST read the recipe through once before you start cooking. I was devastated, but alas I put it in the oven and watched some more reality television (I also snacked on some leftover Crab Rangoons). Once the 60 minutes is up you add the mozzarella and let it get melted and bubbly in the oven for about 5 minutes.

 Final Product:

                   (I just love that little mountain of feta in this picture!)


Even though I had to wait a millennium (between the debacle and the cooking time) to eat eggplant, I was very happy I tried to cook it again. This recipe is great. Once again I over did it with the cheese (you think I would stop and think before putting cheese on my food!), but it was super delicious!! I will be making this every time Anthony isn’t around for dinner (if I don’t order take out)! And there is enough leftover (if you are eating single) for lunch for 2 days at least!! Loved it! If you like eggplant, mushrooms, and red sauce try this out! Finally something I was really happy with. Next time I will remember that I have to cook it for an hour though and start the process earlier. It's a perfect dinner for those who want to eat vegetarian once in awhile!

The Sandwich That Made Me Cry...and Pizza!

When coming up with ideas for dinners without Anthony, I stated to think about all the things that he doesn’t like (eggplant, mushroom, pineapple). Then I remembered a pizza that my friend mentioned. While it sounds like a weird combination, I could totally see why it would be great. This is why I decided to make a Pineapple and Jalapeno Pizza. Pineapple used to be my topping of choice on pizza and it wasn’t always available. I’ve suggested pineapple on pizza to Anthony before, but he is not into the fruit on pizza thing. Luckily I found a recipe online for this exact pizza. At least some people have good taste out there!


The recipe calls for store bought dough (I had a small thought of making my own crust, but it seemed like too much work). I picked up wheat pizza dough from Wegmans. You can either just stretch the dough by hand over your pizza pan or roll it out with a rolling pin. I stretched it by hand (one less item to wash!) and tried to get it as evenly spread out as I possibly could. Then you make an easy pizza sauce (you could just buy pizza sauce to make this even easier) using a can of tomato sauce, olive oil, 1 clove of garlic chopped, and chopped basil, thyme, and parsley. Spread this over the pizza dough, than add mozzarella and parmesan cheese (1/2 of each). Top the cheese with pineapple (1 large can) and jalapenos (1 can), than add the rest of the cheese. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes (at least). Mine was in the oven for 35 minutes.

Final Product:

I'm from New Jersey (we like thin crust!) so the crust on this pizza was too thick for me. That fact alone makes me want to try to make my own crust next time. Even though the crust was thick, it was actually pretty good considering it was store bought. I loved, loved, loved the pineapple with the jalapeno. The combination of the sweet and spicy was perfect. Too much cheese for my taste, but with a few little changes this recipe can be perfect!

A few days ago I really wanted to make a vegetable sandwich with eggplant, portabella mushroom and roasted red peppers. I tried combining two different recipes for said sandwich; one where the veggies are grilled the other where they are sautéed. Disaster ensued and it wasn’t just because I was trying to make something up on my own. The first issue was when I decided this would work without using the grill. I thought it best not to try to grill stuff when Anthony wasn’t home, I didn’t want to blow myself up. So I figured why not just pan fry these things (thinking back now I don’t even know why I thought of that, all that oil on a sandwich = yuck). When I took the portabella mushroom out of the fridge it was a little soggy around the edges and when I took the gills out it was starting to break at the edges. I should have just stopped there, but instead I got my eggplant ready. I put some oil in a pan and added half of the mushroom and two slices of eggplant. Another bad idea was adding the roasted red pepper to the hot pan, it started making a popping sound and was sticking to the pan. I pulled that out right away. Meanwhile the mushroom somehow managed to start burning and the smoke detector started shrilling. Everything was way too oily, the mushroom was way too burned and when taking the red pepper out of the pan half of it fell on the floor. Then I when I tried to cut the bread I discovered it was way too hard; I couldn’t even cut it (this is why I don’t like shopping ahead of time!). I got so angry and frustrated with all of it that I took everything and threw it all in the garbage! There is not final product picture for this one. I thought about taking a picture of the trash, but that wouldn’t have been very attractive.


I had been defeated by the cooking. It finally did me in; to the point that I swore I would not be cooking for the entire rest of the time that I was dining alone. Lack of sleep, coupled with being bored sent me over the edge and I ended up in tears over a vegetable sandwich. A sandwich!! I heated up some leftover pizza and took some deep breaths. Is this it? Am I through with all of it? Done?


I really did think I was and then a miracle happened. Last night I got my act together and managed to put a meal together. The recipe was horrible, so horrible I’m not even going to post it, but I cooked. I didn’t let the whole issue of the night before make me lose my confidence in my ability to cook a basic meal.


Here’s a picture of my recovery meal.

It is fettuccini tossed in a mixture of tomato paste, olive oil, garlic, and hot pepper flakes with salad greens added to it. Why? Who knows! Was it good? Not really, but I was happy. Happy that I moved on from the disaster of the day before and had the will to continue on with my cooking adventure.


Can’t wait to see what I come up with for next week. It’s my last dining alone week, so it should be interesting.

Coconut Poached Salmon

It’s been 4 days of alone time for me. Okay let’s be real I haven’t been alone for very long in the last 4 days. I’m typically a pretty busy person and it seems while Anthony is away that hasn’t changed. I went to a Cabi clothes party (very cute clothes, but way too expensive for me. I’m a firm believer in buying cheap clothes so that I don’t have to keep them for years!), dinner with friends at The Crab Shack (I had the clam bake), more dinner with friends at Beale Street (pulled pork sandwich), and then helping friends move. I got home Saturday night (after helping with the move) and needed to cook something for just me. The itch to cook was there and when the itch happens I must cook (simply because it doesn’t happen often and I wouldn’t want to pass up the chance to blog something).




I was pretty intrigued with what I was going to be cooking, salmon poached in coconut milk. Anything coconut just makes the salivating start. Poaching is something I don’t do very often. I’ve poached eggs just the one time for this blog and I’ve poached chicken for a soup that I make a lot. But I’ve never poached fish. I’m totally in love with the concept! Poaching means (in The Hesitant Cook dictionary): Letting a protein boil/simmer in liquid of some type and it not getting all dried out.


This Rachael Ray recipe was pretty easy to follow. As is typical, I forgot to buy something, in this case a lime. Oh well you can’t expect me to be on top of everything all the time. I also did not make this entire recipe because I was not in the mood for watercress. There is a possibility that I will make this again next week with the watercress, although by then I might find another way to cook salmon (I have one fillet left in the house. If you have a good way for me to cook it let me know.) Back to the recipe, you boil the chicken broth until it reduces by half. At that point you add the coconut milk, lime juice (which I did have on hand), lime zest (which sadly I didn’t have) and basil. Add the salmon and poach it for about 10 minutes. I’m not good at telling when salmon is cooked and I figured it wouldn’t dry out using this method so I poached it for the full 10 minutes. Meanwhile I used some of this rice (I’m not ashamed, I can’t cook rice!) and added some coconut milk to it and heated it on the stove.


The salmon and rice were both done and plated when I remembered that I still had to make the sauce! Oops! Luckily I had heated the plate in the microwave so my food stayed warm. The watercress part of recipe was throwing me off track and I thought I was finished. I brought the poaching liquid to a boil, dissolved the cornstarch with cold water and added it to the liquid. I whisked it until it was thickened and then poured in onto the salmon and rice.


Final Product: 

    

          (sorry my pictures are going to be sad since 

                      Anthony has the good camera!)

This was delicious. I ate the whole thing and I didn’t even realize I was that hungry! The fish was very moist. There was a flavor to it that I can’t describe, sorry I tried to come up with the word while eating it but I couldn’t. It was salty and a little sweet. Poaching fish is the way to go! I was very impressed with how moist the salmon turned out. I’m an over cooker and typically my salmon is on the dry side. This method of cooking is going to be something that I do more often. I encourage everyone to try it out. Even non-cooks like me can do this!


Now if only I could figure out why my grocery bill was eighty dollars! I’m only one person this week, how in the world could I have bought $80 worth of groceries? No meat was bought, no cleaning products, no shampoos or anything like that. Also I only bought ingredients for 4 dinners. Thinking back on what I bought I still can’t fathom why my bill was so high. One portabella and one eggplant couldn’t have done so much damage. It baffles me. Completely. Looks like this weekend I am going to the public market for my vegetables and seeing if that makes a difference. I’ll post a blog about the experience and let you know what I discover!


Tomorrow's blog post:  Pineapple and Jalapeno Pizza



Healthier Sesame Chicken

Chinese food just doesn’t taste as good if you cook it at home.  Plus it makes your house smell like sesame oil for awhile.  Those are the two facts that I had stuck in my head when I attempted to make a healthier version of sesame chicken that I found in Food Network Magazine.  So going into this I knew this wasn’t going to be the fried, breaded, so yummy sesame chicken that I order from New Fong Kitchen (our local Chinese takeout). 

The first bit of confusion came into play when I noticed that the recipe asked for the snow peas to be trimmed.   I had to Google trimming snow peas, having never done that before.  What I learned was there is some sort of string like bit that is holding the pea together and people said you should remove them on both sides.  There is debate about whether both sides are necessary.  I did my best but it was hard to get that little stringy bit off.  Sometimes it would break and I would just leave it half there half not there.  My thought was as long as these peas are cooked well you can probably just eat the whole thing.  Peeling both sides off seems silly because the whole thing will fall apart.  This is still a mystery to me; if anyone knows anything about trimming snow peas please give me some pointers!  

Now that the snow pea trimming hurdle had been tackled (albeit not very gracefully) lets move on to the rest of the recipe.  First step (this happens before the snow pea trimming, but is not nearly as interesting) is marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes in a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and honey.  

 

Once your chicken is marinated you sauté it (do it in two batches so there is enough room in the pain for the chicken to cook properly) until it’s cooked.  The recipe says until it’s browned but you can’t see the color on the chicken underneath all that brown sauce, so just cut a few pieces open to see if it’s done.  Another thing about this recipe that I didn’t like was once the chicken is cooked you transfer it to a plate and then you are supposed to wipe out the pan.  The pan was covered in sauce and super hot so I got Anthony to help me.  This part is ridiculous though.  If I were you I would just use a new pan, you shouldn’t have to wipe pans out while you are cooking.  

The next step is heating up the scallions, ginger, and garlic and then while you are doing that you are supposed to whisk up a sauce containing chicken broth, cornstarch, sugar, rice vinegar, chili paste, and soy sauce.   I read ahead in the recipe and decided to make this sauce while the chicken was cooking.  I don’t like to leave garlic unattended over heat because it tends to burn.  You add the sauce to the pan and stir until it’s thickened.  Meanwhile you can steam the snow peas as you stir the sauce for a few minutes.   Once the sauce has thickened stir in the chicken until heated. 

             

I made basmati rice to go with this because it’s the only rice besides instant that I had.  Cooking rice is the pits.  I just can’t get it right at all.  It was mushy and not very appealing.  When will I ever understand how to cook rice correctly?!  

Final Product:  

This was a flavorful (I might use a little less sesame oil next time) dish.  The rice was a disaster and the snow pea trimming was a pain in the butt, but other than those things this dish was easy to make.  Make this if you have a craving for Chinese, but don’t want all the calories. 

There has been a ton of life going on over here.  I haven’t had any time to cook, which means no material to blog about.  But…there is a challenge ahead of me.  My husband has gone off to Peru (for 20 days) and left me to fend for myself and I can’t afford to eat take-out every night.  So can I come up with meals for one person or will I just give up and eat frozen meals?  The challenge is on!

Coconut Vegetable Curry

This post will be kind of lame. I didn’t do a lot of cooking the last 4 days. I was supposed to share with you the pork roll sandwich picture, but we had an issue with the pork roll. We bought a roll from Wegmans , but the slices Anthony cut from the roll were so tiny! Question for the Jersey people reading this, was that always the case little bitty slices, because that's not what I remember?! We went back to Wegmans yesterday and the pre-sliced is much bigger than the roll slices. What’s up with that?! I did have Anthony fry me an egg and some pork roll for breakfast yesterday. I’m okay with the pieces being smaller for breakfast, but not on a sandwich. Three of those tiny slices barely filled the Kaiser roll we had it on.

Not sure who was watching the show America’s Next Great Restaurant, but sadly Spice Coast (an Indian fast casual idea) didn’t win. I was pulling for it, because I would eat there a lot! It was between Spice Coast (Indian flavors), Brooklyn Meatball Co (meatballs), and Soul Daddy (soul food). Spice Coast would have been the only place I could eat at more often. I have nothing against meatballs or soul food (I love both a bunch!), but that’s not the type of food I can eat often. Indian is! (In case anyone is wondering Soul Daddy won! Congrats to Jamawn Woods! ) So strangely enough I made a vegetable curry last night, the night that Spice Coast lost. I love Indian spices! I’ve even added curry to my tomato sauce before. Yum!

The actual name of the recipe is Indian Coconut Curried Vegetables. Please don’t judge me when I tell you that I had Anthony chop the vegetables. I’m slow and I just wanted to get the cooking over with and Anthony is so fast at chopping vegetables! Not to mention that cooking should be a family activity right?! So the veggies were prepped: carrot and zucchini sliced, cauliflower cut, green beans snapped (is that what you call that snapped? I did the snapping!), onion, garlic, and ginger chopped. I didn’t buy a chili pepper, because I already had chili paste. I put the onion, garlic, ginger, and chili paste in my little food processor and made it into a paste basically. Put this mixture in a skillet with some oil and added the spices:  coriander, cumin, curry, and turmeric and heat it for a couple of minutes. Then I added all the vegetables and the coconut milk. It says to use 1 cup of the coconut milk, but I added a whole can and added some more of the spices in case the milk diluted it. You cover this and let it cook for 20 minutes or until the vegetables are tender.

                                    (I just love the color of curry dishes!)

I made basmati rice and heated up some naan bread to go with the veggie curry.  Overall this meal was super simple to make! The hardest part is chopping the veggies. The result: ah not so great. It was actually quite bland. I don’t think this is due to me adding a little more coconut milk than asked for since I added more of the spices. I’m not sure what the problem with this recipe is. The only thing I can come up with is to add more salt than the ½ a teaspoon it says to add and maybe even more of the spices. Crazy to think with all those spices we still ended up with a pretty bland main dish. Anthony said it needs chicken, but I’m trying to have as many meatless meals as possible. Although I’m sure it would taste better with chicken in it! I’m actually willing to try it with chicken just to see if it will up the flavor.

Not sure what will be on the menu for this week. I didn’t plan ahead. I wanted my meals to be a surprise this week. I need some excitement in my life, so I’m living on the edge. Yes, for me not having a menu for the week is living on the edge. I’m sure some of you do this all the time, but I’m a planner!

Weekend Cooking

Weekend cooking is much less rushed than weeknight cooking in our house. I decided to cook Saturday and Sunday. This doesn’t normally happen, because I would rather go taste delicious food elsewhere on the weekend rather than cook. Alas Anthony had his last two days of clinical so there was no time to go out for dinner. Since we had to stay in, I took on a challenge that I have been meaning to face for awhile now. That challenge was risotto. I’ve never cooked it before, because I’ve heard it’s hard to get it just right. I am not one to try anything hard in the kitchen. I like easy, fast, nothing too terrible can go wrong kind of recipes but the challenge was ON!


I have a Rachael Ray cookbook that only has vegetarian recipes in it and I found a risotto recipe in there. She also had a few variations of it and the one I chose to use was adding asparagus to the risotto. The recipe added a step I didn’t know you should do when making risotto and that is putting the broth in a separate pot on the stove and letting it simmer. That brings me to my next point about risotto, I had to use 4 separate pans/pots for this recipe. One for the broth, one to steam the asparagus, one to sauté the asparagus, and one for the rice! That would never work for a weeknight, so this should only be made when you have a lot of time to clean all the dishes! I believe this is a very traditional risotto recipe, you sauté onion in olive oil and butter. Then you add the Arborio rice and sauté for a few minutes. We added some wine once the rice was sautéed, it was not in the recipe but Anthony said it’s normally in risotto. Now we are at the point where you start adding the broth, start with a cup, keep stirring the rice and wait for the rice to soak the broth up.   

The recipe says to do this until half of the broth is used (3 cups), than taste the rice and if it needs more broth add it in gradually because you don’t want to overcook the rice. Overcook the rice? Is that possible? I used all of the broth and the rice was still a little bit crunchy. There wasn’t any broth left so I just had to call it quits. I stirred in the now sautéed (with garlic) asparagus and the parmigiano reggiano.

Final Product:

You know what? It really wasn’t all that bad for a first effort. I assumed it would be inedible. The flavor was good; it was just a bit crunchy. My idea for next time is to sauté the rice (before broth is added) for a little bit longer and to heat up more broth. This rice needs a lot of liquid! Those are my tips and I hope you will try to make risotto. It’s really nowhere near as hard and time consuming as people always say it is. You just have to have a little patience. I’m not known for my patience in any situation, but I managed to overcome that while making this risotto.


The other meal I cooked this weekend was, Tuscan Salmon with Rosemary Orzo. Not nearly as difficult and it’s pretty healthy. Once again I have a Wegman’s complaint. Don’t hate on me! Sometimes to make things easier I buy the frozen salmon club pack. There is a disclaimer if you follow the link that states: Although We Have Made Our Best Efforts to Remove All Bones, it is Possible That on Rare Occasions Small Bones May be Found. Would a rare occasion be at least 2-3 bones in every single piece that I serve? We find bones (okay it’s almost always in Anthony’s piece) every time we eat these frozen salmon fillets. That would not be a rare occasion since we eat salmon usually once a week. Wegman’s, you might need tighter quality control!!


Enough complaining…back to the cooking! There isn’t a ton of prep to be done, chopping an onion, cutting cherry tomatoes in half, slicing kalamata olives, chopping rosemary, basil, and parsley. Ok maybe there is a bit of prep to be done, but it was fast! Cook the orzo according to the package and sauté some onion and rosemary. Add the onion and rosemary to the orzo once it’s been strained. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and basil on the salmon, cook for 5 minutes each side or until done (and hopefully you will know when that is!). Take that out and cook up the vegetables (garlic, onion, tomato, and olives), this takes maybe a total of 8 minutes.

After that you take it off the heat and stir in the parsley and basil. Serve the salmon on the orzo and top with the veggie mixture.

Final Product:

Well my first mistake was forgetting to buy basil, so I used dried and that was a fine solution. The other problem I had (I always have this problem when cooking fish) was undercooking the salmon. I had it on much longer than 5 minutes a side, because they didn’t look completely cooked. Finally the salmon started burning so I took it out. Once we got to the table with the salmon, part of my fillet was undercooked. Yes, I know you can eat undercooked salmon (and I do with sushi all the time!), but as a fillet it freaks me out a little. So I just ate around it; it wasn’t a huge piece that was undercooked. This was a very good meal, minus the undercooked salmon. It tastes good and it's healthy. Try it out!


I’m proud of myself for staying in and cooking this weekend. It doesn’t happen often, but I feel healthier for it and also saved money! Since the weekend we haven’t had anything spectacular for dinner: egg salad sandwiches Monday night (had to use up some of the Easter eggs I dyed) and black bean and cheese quesadillas last night. I have been doing really well with not eating meat of any kind this week.  That will be turning around the next few nights. Tonight we will be having pork roll sandwiches for dinner (yes I will be posting pictures since they now have the actual rolls and not just the slices at Wegman’s) and Thursday night we are going to Brewtopia (a monthly beer tasting event) at Rohrbach’s. I will be making a vegetable coconut curry that I will share with you this weekend. Can’t wait, it sounds wonderful!

Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna

I’ve been thinking more and more about cutting red meat from my diet. It really won’t affect me all that much. Looking at this week so far, I haven’t had red meat. The last time I had red meat was last Wednesday when we ate tacos. Of course considering how little I eat red meat (remember I think steak tastes like liver, so I avoid that almost always!), it probably doesn’t matter whether I eat the occasional bit of ground beef. Pork would be harder for me to give up. I love pork sausage, pork roll, bacon, ham steak, pulled pork, and the Carnitas at Chipotle. This would be a major sacrifice and I just don’t think I could do it. Have any of you cut things out of your diets (for non health reasons) that you thought you couldn’t give up, but you made it through? BTW I’m seriously not cutting out pork. Don’t even ask me about it!



Ah, dinner. I had been feeling sick during the day yesterday and I was very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to eat dinner. Less concerned about my food intake and more concerned that I wouldn’t have a blog post for you all. (See how much I love all of you!) Luckily my sickness turned and I was starving. I wanted to make something interesting, but easy for everyone. I’m still on my lazy kick. Don’t judge me too harshly!  The only way I can continue cooking most every day is if I am allowed lazy weeks.  So, Ravioli and Escarole Lasagna (from Everyday with Rachel Ray) was what was for dinner last night. There are times when it’s just easier to substitute ingredients rather than waste what you already have. I had spinach left over from the lentil soup, so I used that instead of escarole. (Both leafy greens, what’s the difference!) You are probably thinking, how in the world is lasagna for the lazy cook? This lasagna is perfect for the lazy cook! It’s only 5 ingredients and those are ravioli, escarole (spinach), 1 24 oz jar of red sauce, Italian sausage, and mozzarella cheese.


All you do is take the sausage out of the casing and cook it over medium heat (crumbling it as you cook) , until it’s no longer pink. Take it out of the pan (I drained the grease out of the pan, it’s not required) and then put the escarole/spinach in with some salt and pepper. Cook that until it’s wilted. Take the jar of red sauce and spread it in the bottom of a casserole dish, layer the ravioli next (I used the refrigerator kind), then sausage, escarole/spinach and the cheese on top. I’m pretty sure I didn’t use as much cheese as suggested (16 oz) that just seems like way too much even for a cheese lover. You pop that in the oven at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, let it cool for about 5 minutes and there’s your dinner!

Final Proguct:

This was good. It could have been better. When I was eating it I wasn’t sure what I didn’t like about it, if it was the jarred sauce (which I don’t use often) or the sausage. Anthony told me it was the sausage, there was just too much of it. I used 4 links, which was a little over a pound. I didn’t want to waste any. Think I might only use 3 links next time and freeze the extra one. This meal would be a good addition to a weeknight menu, as long as you used less sausage. This will also make for good leftovers.


Tonight I won’t be cooking. We are going to The Owl House. Figure I might as well review the food we have on Facebook tomorrow. It’s a pretty cool place. This weekend I’m really planning on challenging myself by making risotto with asparagus. To say I’m nervous would be an understatement. After work today I might actually run to Wegmans and get a frozen pizza just in case!