What's for dinner?

One of our favorite dinners is this. It's pasta, onion, spinach, cherry tomato, turkey Italian sausage and parmesan cheese (on top). It's as easy as pie (though pie is not easy, but this dish is!).




I used to have the recipe for that dish, but I don't know where it is... Here's what I do. Cook the onions and sausage well, cook the pasta (1 lb), save a cup or two of the starchy water from the pasta (before you drain it), add the bag of fresh spinach (9 oz) and cherry tomatoes to the sausage onion mix (cut the cherry tomatoes in half--or not, depending on how lazy you're feeling... heh), add the hot pasta-water, let the spinach get all wilty, then add the pasta, serve and sprinkle with fresh parmesan. Oh, and add those little red pepper things (you know the kind that come with pizza) while you're cooking the spinach and onion... Add to taste (I usually do 1/4-1/2 teaspoon, but I don't measure). It all only takes me about 20-30 minutes to make. Easy, and not too bad for you.

I made the Kamut spiral pasta (see post #3 in this one) and tried it in this dish. I liked it with it. The Kamut definitely tastes "healthier" than regular pasta, but, so far, all of the healthy pastas have tasted healthier. Kamupt is a little grittier. I feel good eating about them though so I'll continue and soon, I'll get used to them and not even notice the difference (or so I tell myself).

Anyway, when I made this recipe the last time, I bought 5 turkey sausages... I'm not sure why. I usually only use about 3 links (and then I squeeze the sausage goodness out of them and cook it so it's ground sausage) when I make the recipe, but I thought I might want more for the Kamut, but then I didn't, and I had 2 extra sausages.

What does one do with two extra sausages? Get your mind out of the gutter! We don't eat meat in our house very often (we probably eat meat once every 3 weeks or so), so I knew that there was a chance they wouldn't get eaten. I could have frozen them, but then it would have been 2010 before I remembered that I had done that and they wouldn't have gotten eaten...

So what did I do? I know you're all curious! I'm so proud. I invented a new dinner!

I cooked the sausage, then I took some ratatouille (Whole Foods sells one that is already made and frozen), added that, and put it over brown rice. Voila! A new dinner! Yippee! We liked it. Flavorful, fairly healthy and oh so easy! I think it took less than 20 minutes. Next time I make it I'll add some more vegetables (probably some red pepper) and yum! I'm so excited.