Dinner

Bought some “Sweet Italian Turkey Sausage” at Longo’s and felt inspired to do pasta tonight.  Small shells, homemade tomato sauce, sautéed mushrooms, roasted onions and Texas toast garlic bread.  The onions were coated with a mix of olive oil & balsamic vinegar before being roasted, which I was really excited about; however, the breaker to our apartment blew twice during this meal and during the blackouts, half of my onions burned, which was a complete bummer.  Not only that, but the pasta ended up getting soggy from sitting there in the water by itself.  The sausage came out of the casing easily (which is good as I assume the casing was pig) and so I ended up cooking it in little pinches, that while looking tiny in the pan ended up really large in comparison to the shells; in the future I’d break the sausage down QUITE a lot more.  I don’t know how much fat the sausage put off, because I couldn’t see anything in the pan and I assume that what of it there was got sucked back up into the meat before I put the mushrooms into the pan to sauté, as there definitely wasn’t any there for the mushrooms to cook in and I had to add some olive oil to pan for them.

The onions, what few of them ended up in the sauce, were really delicious.  I think that as a simple roasted veggie side dish, the balsamic & olive oil will be a winning topping.  The sausage was alright and would have been much better if it were SPICY — as it stood, they were just really bland pieces of meat with a kinda funny texture that did not add anything to the dish.  Mushrooms were cooked perfectly.  The Texas toast came from Longo’s, $3.99 for 16 pieces, and Chris remarked on how much he enjoyed it.  I cooked it on tinfoil since I didn’t want to make a baking sheet dirty.

Late edit/update: Got a nasty bellyache and had some unpleasant toilet time a few hours after dinner.  Not sure if this is related to Braxton-Hicks contractions, the sausage, or the fact that I had both ice cream AND a giant bowl of popcorn for dessert.  Guess I’ll know when I finish off the two sausages that remain — I’m thinking a generously spiced sausage & potato hash w/eggs would be a reeeeeally tasty breakfast.  We’ll just see if it makes for an unpleasant lunch.