The Stuff of Pasta

I know I posted a recipe pretty recently, but this week Matthew and I are in California for his work and I have been watching Food Network all day and it is making me think about food! Also, sitting in a hotel room all week, I'm not able to actual make any recipes! Cooking has definitely become one of my favorite hobbies since getting married. It is so satisfying to start with simple ingredients and shape a delicious meal or dessert.

This is one of our favorite go-to dishes. We don't really have a name for it and I've never had a written recipe for it. Hubby made this as a bachelor and I have tried to make it a little fancier. We've only ever called it "Pasta Stuff". Enlightening, isn't it?

Pasta Stuff

1 box pasta (whatever kind you like. We enjoy shells, rotini, or spaghetti)

1 pound Italian style sausage

1 16-oz jar of Alfredo Sauce (I like to use Roasted Garlic)

1/8 cup milk

2 cloves minced garlic (or 2 teaspoons garlic powder)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1/4 cup parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (or whatever other spicy seasoning you may like. I often add cajun seasoning instead)

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp parsley

Cook the pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

Brown the Italian sausage and drain the excess grease. Add the minced garlic and cook for another minute. Pour in the Alfredo Sauce, then use the 1/8 cup of milk to rinse out the container and add to the skillet. Add remaining ingredients and cheese and simmer for 5-8 minutes. Add the pasta and allow to sit for a few more minutes. Serve with extra Parmesan cheese.

Super easy and super tasty. This is a standard "it's-late-we-haven't-eaten-and-need-a-fast-meal". It's very filling. We eat off one batch of this for a week. I hope you enjoy! As always, if you try this out, let me know how it goes!

Easiest Sloppy Joes Ever

So, it's been a couple very busy weeks. We flew to Connecticut the first weekend of July and moved the second weekend. This last weekend was our first "free" weekend all month! We spent almost all day Saturday at a friend's house playing Zombicide. It took nearly 8 hours! But it was great fun. Sunday we went to church for the first time in 3 weeks and it was so refreshing. On the way home, we realized that we still had stuff left in our old apartment that we needed to pick up, so hubby volunteered to load it while I fixed lunch. So my mission was to come up with a quick meal utilizing ground beef.

I've been trying to cut down on grocery spending by shopping the sales, so this last week I purchased a 10 pound pack of ground beef from our meat market. That's a LOT of ground beef. Especially if you don't have a dedicated freezer…. Anyway, I spent the better part of Friday afternoon separating the meat into one-pound packages and browning some of those. In the end, I split the meat into 6 unbrowned and 4 browned packages and stuck all in the freezer minus one that I wanted to use on Sunday.

Hubby suggested Sloppy Joes and they sounded great, but I realized that I had never made them before! I guess I always relied on Mom… Hubs suggested that I use ketchup and barbeque sauce because that's what he "always did". I didn't have any better ideas, so I decided to go for it. I think it turned out pretty well, so I wanted to share the recipe with you!

I split the meat in half so we could have hamburgers later on in the week and browned the other half of ground beef with a very small onion, chopped up. (The onion was minuscule, so you'll probably want to use a 1/2 of a normal sized onion if you are only cooking 1/2 pound of meat like I did).

After it had all cooked, I drained the extra grease and added a glove of minced garlic. I let that heat for a few minutes, and then added approximately...

1/2 cup of ketchup,

1/4 of sweet barbeque sauce,

1/2 tsp cajun seasoning (chili powder or seasoned salt would probably work if you don't have cajun seasoning),

1/4 teaspoon of dry mustard. I would have put in prepared mustard, but we were out.

I mixed all that together and let it simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes on low heat. Then I served it on buns with sliced and pan fried potatoes and grapes. All in all, it turned out to be a great experiment!

If any of you try it, let me know what you think! Of, if you have your own Sloppy Joe recipes, share them with me! Also, sorry there is no picture....I completely forgot to snap one when we sat down to eat!