A Month of Meals - Day 4

Menu: Pasta w/ Pumpkin and Sausage, Spinach Salad w/ Apple & Red onion

Recipe: Posted here

I decided to try a Rachael Ray recipe for tonight. I've never seen her show, but I know she has a cookbook about fast meals. Off I went to her site to figure out what I could do with the leftover pumpkin from Matt's b-day cake. Ta-da! Pumpkin Pasta. I'm a pretty awful food photographer, but I think it looks better in my picture than the screen capture they used to accopany the recipe.

Damages: A large pot, a large skillet, two measuring cups, a cutting board. . . quite a few dishes, but I was able to fit all of them in one dishwasher load along with the rest of the dishes we created today.

Time Spent: 40 minutes. I'd never made this before and like so many things I make, I think it would go together a little faster the second time around. I try a new recipe at least once a week and sometimes I wonder if I make my life harder than it needs to be by doing this. I'm always looking for that next great recipe that we can't live without and something to use up the leftovers that another dish generates.

Pros: Only requires ingredients that I usually have on hand--except fresh sage. I substituted a teaspoon of ground. I also used half-and-half instead of heavy cream because that's what I had. As written, the recipe made enough for dinner and 4 additional servings.

Cons: We thought it tasted a little too sausagey. I think you could get away with half the sausage.

Final Review: I forgot to take a picture of the final review! At first Matt said one thumb up, but then it grew on him. It's the kind of dish that I think will taste better the second day. No complaints from Winnie except that she won't eat raw spinach. Instead of salad she just got apple slices. I probably won't be in a rush to make the pasta again. The salad, however, was terrific. Winnie dipped her apples in the dressing and it made just the right amoung of dressing.