Sausages & Sun Dried Tomato Alfredo Pasta Dinner

I want to share with you one of my favourite dinner recipes. It takes about half an hour to prepare and virtually fool proof. Being relatively new to the cooking world, I need something easy and quick so I don't want to jab myself in the eye with my wooden spoon. Sadly, I am not one of those people that love cooking. Making food is a necessity and it's neither exciting nor awful for me. It just is. This recipe is simple and both my hubs and I love it.

Bear with me while I type up my first ever recipe. Hopefully, I won't leave anything out! No, that's too ambitious. Let's aim for not leaving much out.

Sausages & Sun Dried Tomato Alfredo Pasta Dinner

(4 servings)

Ingredients:

- 4 mild Italian sausages

- 8 oz chopped mushrooms

- pasta of your choice

- 1 jar Classico Sun Dried Alfredo Sauce

- 1/2 cup of milk

- 2 handfuls baby spinach

- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Directions:

1. Cook sausages whole in a preheated oven at 425 F for 17-19 minutes, turning over midway.

2. While sausages are cooking, heat chopped mushrooms on a large skillet, on medium heat until slightly brown.

3. Add sauce, milk, and seasoning to skillet. Add a pinch of cayenne pepper for extra flavour. Keep on low/medium heat  for 10 minutes.

4. Boil pasta and drain. Add to skillet along with cut-up sausages.

5. Roughly chop the baby spinach leaves and add to skillet. Keep on low heat for five minutes and serve.

This is the kind of recipe you can tweak a million ways. You can substitute chicken instead of sausages, add peppers or zucchini, season with garlic and paprika, add shredded cheese, etc. The possibilities really are endless with this one. I hope you give it a try!

xoxo, E

PS - Can you think of a better name for this recipe? The one I came up with seems long and boring.

Stripe Happy

Sixish months ago, shortly before the big I Do, the Mr. and I moved into our first ever house. It is the first experience living away from our parents for both of us. I would say we are doing mighty fine considering this life-altering change of scenery. Communication and compromise are the two huge C words that I try to live by. Note, try. I definitely slip from time to time. Nobody's perfect! I gotta work it! (Miley, anyone?) But one thing we don't have to communicate or compromise much about is decor. I am pleased to say he voluntarily put me in the driver's seat here. Which brings me to my latest DIY project!

Prior to moving our stuff in, we hired painters to come in and slap some nicer colour over the previous owners' not-not-so-nice colour preferences. We I decided that our pint-sized powder room was going to start out light grey as a solid neutral that would be easy to layer other colours on. I don't remember the exact name, but it is close to Sherwin Williams' Tinsmith. (UPDATE: I looked up my paint swatches and the grey is called Morning Fog) With peach? cream? weird-coloured tile and white sink+toilet, I knew I wanted to paint giant white horizontal stripes on the long wall.

The first step was to measure out the height of each stripe and tape 'er down. The obvious method is to measure out the wall and divide it equally between the amount of stripes you want. This is also the most pain-in-the-butt way. You might end up with weird dimensions like 10.4667 inches. I didn't want to have to deal with busting out a ruler and the possibility of imperfect measurements. My oh-so-handy mom suggested I use an object and just move it down while drawing the lines. Does that make sense? It made sense when she said it. I ran upstairs, grabbed a standard 8.5" x 11" piece of paper from the printer and thus began the 11" stripe. If I was a good experienced blogger, I would have taken a photo of me holding up the paper to the wall and marking a line underneath. But I'm a novice, so forgive me. Here's a pic of everything (except the sides, which I did after taking the photo) all taped down.

I heard from many a-experienced blogger that Frog Tape was the shizz when it comes to painter's tape. So I took their word for it and followed suit. Now it was time to paint! I used CIL Smart Trim and Door Paint because I had that on hand from baseboard painting. I also liked how since it has a semi-gloss finish, the stripes would have some shine to them. Oh, FYI, the grey is an eggshell.

Clearly, one coat of paint wouldn't cut it. I, nor anyone else on the planet, didn't think it would. I found that the paint dried quickly (I only watched one episode of Greek in between). To be completely transparent (me, not the paint. Ha!) I should reveal that I did the edging three times because I thought the paintbrushed part didn't cover as well. I was nervous about taking the tape off because I had heard scary tales of paint coming off along with the tape. John and Sherry suggested to take the tape off immediately to prevent such nightmares.

And it worked! I was so happy and relieved to see perfectly clean lines. Paint bleeding would have ruined the whole look and I probs would have shed a tear or two. Thanks Frog Tape! (No, they are not sponsoring this, I just want to share with y'all when a product works well)

 

Ta-daaaaaaaaaa. I lovelovelove them. I think it elongates our teeny powder room. I am pondering whether I should also stripe-up the opposite wall (where the doorway is). Thoughts? I might sit on the toilet the idea for a while and see.

xoxo, E

Nice to meet you too!

So here it is. My first post ever. Eek! I guess this means I'm part of the Blogworld? Blogosphere? Blogiverse? Clearly I'm new to this. I'm here to write about my adventures. This is a huge step out of my comfort zone. Part of me hopes that no one will ever read this because that means I have to face other people's comments and opinions. So be gentle, pretty please!

About me? I don't know if I want to share my name quite yet. Maybe you can call me E for now? I'm a mid-twenty-year-old. I'm married. I laugh easy, I cry easy, I fall in love easy, I shut down easy. I can be fun, I can be boring.

How's that for a first post? Not too exciting, eh? Blogging for the first time is weird. I have so much to talk about but I feel like I need to reserve myself for this first post. Thus I'm eager to write my second one!

xoxo, E.