Recipes Discovered

Update: New and Improved Recipe

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage Recipe

Spinach Salad with Apples and Red Onion Recipe

As much as I love to cook, sometimes I don’t like to think about what I am cooking. Enter Rachael Ray. Now I know some people can’t stand her while others think she is the best thing ever, but I will say that usually, she has pretty decent recipes. What I really like about her is that she doesn’t just prepare a recipe, she prepares a complete meal that works together. The flavors compliment each other, and it’s well balanced. For dinner the other night, Seth and I had pasta with pumpkin and sausage along with a spinach salad with apples and red onion. All the ingredients worked together, and, best of all, I didn’t have to think about what I was cooking.

First, the salad, which is really simple. The dressing it simply olive oil, vinegar, grain mustard, honey, salt, and pepper. After whisking it together, I poured it over spinach leaves topped with sliced apples and red onions. >>

As for the main dish, it was also fairly simple (another thing I tend to like about Rachael Ray’s recipes). The recipe calls for bulk sausage, which I didn’t have, so I removed the casing from link sausage and then broke it up. After it was cooked, I removed it from the pan, and then added garlic and onions to the pan. When the onion was tender, I added a bay leaf, sage, wine (I used a Riesling) and let then cook for a minute before adding chicken stock, pumpkin, and cream. I cut down on the cream in the recipe, just to make it a little more healthy. Once the sauce came to a simmer, I added the sausage back to the pan along with cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. I let the sauce continue to simmer while I cooked the pasta. I used whole wheat pasta, which I really love. To me, it has more flavor that regular pasta, plus it has a lot more nutritional value. Once I pasta was cooked and drained, I added it to the pan with the sauce. After mixing the pasta with the sauce, I served it with lots of freshly grated parmigiano cheese and the spinach salad.

I loved this meal. The dressing for the salad had a lot of flavor that paired well with the spinach leaves. The apples in the salad added a sweetness that complimented the pasta sauce, which was slightly sweet itself, but also a little spicy. The pumpkin and sausage were a great together, along with a little nutty flavor from the whole wheat pasta. Overall, it was an outstanding meal that I would gladly cook again without thinking about it.