Thanks, everyone. I'm glad to be back. :-)
While I was on my hiatus from blogging I took maybe 2 pictures of things I could share. I'm not proud to say that over the last 2 months we've eaten a lot of quick throw together things as well as a number of take out meals. When you don't feel good it's hard to get excited about cooking (or anything for that matter).
One of the meals that I actually cooked and we liked came out of the Crockpot cookbook Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes. It's not very exciting, but it worked.
Yes, it's a pasta sauce recipe. Unfortunately it's not just a "throw all together in the morning and let it cook all day recipe" but it was nice that it was ready to eat when we were and at 5:00 I didn't have to stand and cook. The original recipe says you can cook it all day (well, 6 to 8 hours), but in the past I've found if you cook Italian sausage all day in the crockpot it gets, well, mushy and unappetizing. I opted to throw all the actual sauce ingredients into the crockpot in the early morning and then about 2 hours before dinner throw in the browned sausage (and mushrooms). All in all something I could happily repeat again.
Fettuccine with Sausage & Mushrooms
(modified from Better Homes & Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes)
- 12 ounces sweet Italian sausage (I used a pound)
- 2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
- 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes
- 8 ounce can tomato sauce
- 6 ounce can tomato paste
- 2/3 cup water
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 9 to 12 ounces dried fettuccine or spaghetti
- Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
- In Crockpot, combine crushed tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, water, sugar, rosemary and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours.
- In a large skillet, brown the sausage (crumbled) with the onion and garlic. Once almost brown, add the mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms have wilted and are slightly brown. Add to the cooking tomato sauce and continue cooking on low for another 1 to 2 hours.
- Cook pasta according to package directions. Serve pasta sauce over pasta and top with Parmesan cheese.
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