Parmesan pasta with sausage

I think I first started doing this when trying to make an easy substitute for alfredo sauce.  It's one of our favorites and great for left over lunches for the rest of the week.  The make or break for this recipe is a really good steak seasoning.  The one I have has whole grains of pepper kernals, whole seeds, and actual red pepper flakes that hydrate really well in the butter/cheese mixture.  My mom gives it to me as a stocking stuffer every year.  She gets it from the dollar store.

Ingredients:
16 oz bag of pasta
2 tbs margarine
3/4 cup parmesan cheese (or any shaker cheese)
2 links italian sausage
Steak seasoning, garlic to taste (I use a lot)

Direction:
1. In a large pot of boiling water, cook pasta until soft to the bite.
2. In another pot of boiling water, cook sausage links for 10 minutes, then transfer to frying pan to brown the exterior.  Cube sausage once cooked.

3. Immediately once pasta is cooked, strain and transfer to a large mixing bowl.  Add margarine and mix until melted margarine coats pasta evenly.  Fold in parmesan cheese, steak seasoning and garlic.  The cheese will melt into the butter with the heat of the pasta and become stringy.

4. Once sauce evenly coats all pasta, add cubed sausage, mixing evenly.
5. Serve with vegatable. Possibly this one.

Serves:
6-8 people, or 2 people and lunch left overs for a week.

Time to table:
20-25 mintues

Pigs in a blanket

My husband's fanatical love for this dish has turned my occasional love of this item at baby showers and bachelorette partiers into a regular feast.  Note: the secret to fantastic pigs in a blanket is the quality of hot dog you buy.  After experiencing the dogs they have at Costco I am entirely ruined for the 49 cent packages sold in most grocery stores.  Not hard to make these ones, but this blog is for sharing ideas for tapped out brains, not gormet recipes to spend all day on.

Ingredients:

Dough (yet again, I use the dough resulting from the basic white bread recipe on my bread maker.  Any dough that you usually use for rolls or bread will do. Some common ones are rhodes rolls, or pillsbury pop biscuits)

Hot Dogs (I use BAR S Polish Sausage dogs.)
Cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. After first rise (if using bread maker dough) cut dough into roll sized wedges. (A large loaf recipe should leave enough for 16-18 rolls.)

2. Cut hot dogs in half.
3. Slice cheddar cheese in to strips equal to the length of your halved hot dogs.

4. Wrap one halved hot dog and one cheese strip in dough wedge, making sure that the dough completely connects on the far side.  Repeat until you run out of dough or hot dogs.

5. Follow baking directions on dough package to cook (With bread maker dough it's usually 15 minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit.)

Serves: A LOT.

Time to table:
30 minutes

Home made "Macaroni and Cheese"

Or, more accurately, Pasta in Cheddar Cheese sauce with polish sausage.  Another fun "cream sauce" recipe.  Interesting fact: Pasta is made in different shapes so you can decide how you want it to interact with the sauce you put on it.  I REALLY love this sauce, so I get shells that will hold extra bunches of cheesey sauce in it's natural bowl.

Simplified instructions: Cream Sauce and cheddar cheese mixed with pasta and hot dogs.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup butter/margarine
1/3 cup flour
3 cups milk
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 cups grated cheddar cheese
1 16 oz bag pasta cooked pasta
3 Bar S Polish Sausage Hot Dogs cooked (I usually fry them for the brown on the outside)
       -Any hot dogs can be used to make this more accessible to those who don't buy this brand of hot dogs in bulk, or a ham steak from the grocery store if you want to dress it up a little extra.

Directions:
1. Melt butter in frying pan on low.  Melt, not bubble.
2. Add flour 1 Tbs at a time, mixing it into the butter until evenly distributed.
(I generally mix it in with a spatula)
Butter/Flour mixture should be doughey. 
3 . Add milk one cup at a time, mixing constantly to eliminate lumps before adding the next cup.
(My mom had the skills to use a whisk.  My white sauces were never really lump-free until I started to use a hand mixer to mix it all.  Hense the cast-iron skillet.)
4.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Be generous.  The white sauce should taste delicious all by itself.
5.  Add Cheddar Cheese to warm mixture, stirring until cheese melts, turing cream sauce a pleasing deep yellow.
6.  Cube polish sausage dogs into centemeter pieces and stir into the sauce.
7.  Stir cooked pasta into cheese/sausage dog mix until all pasta is evenly coated with sauce.
8.  If desired put frying pan directly into oven on broil for 3 minutes to brown and add crunch.

Servings:
6 full adults, or a family of 4 with 4 left over lunches.

Cook Time:
30 Min (including cooking pasta and dogs as prep time)

Home Made Lunches

Another benefit of making dinner is left overs for the next day.  I write this as I munch on a left over quesodilla from my last post.  I'm re-posting the story of a friend of mine who is a fellow dinner-maker and I find that I LOVE her story.

"Apparently, a couple of my husband's work friends LOVE ME without ever having met me.  Why, you ask...  because my husband always has good, homemade meals for lunch.  One of them said his meals were more than just good, they were pretty much gourmet!

I have to admit, this made me feel good, but I didn't think I was doing anything special.  Truthfully, all I do is cook a little extra for dinner and package it up for his lunch the next day.  Actually, I don't even package it, he does.  I don't think I cook extra special dinners, or gourmet anything...

The only obvious conclusion I draw from this is homemade lunches are out of style.

My husband said that most people go out to eat or bring a frozen meal every day for lunch.  This leads me to wonder if people even eat a homemade dinner (because if they did, wouldn't they have leftovers?).

Maybe, just like sewing has become a lost art, cooking is going out of style as well.  How sad would that be? 

I am making a promise right now, that my children (even the boys) will know how to cook a decent meal.  Eating out is just too expensive.


Curiosity Research:
The average American eats 4.8 meals per week in restaurants (dine-in and carry-out), with the most popular meal being lunch at 2.6 meals eaten on average each week.

Americans Spend A Stupid Amount On Coffee & Lunch Every Year
A new survey from Accounting Principals' reveals that the average American worker spends over $1,000 a year of coffee, plus another $2,000 a year on lunch out.

How Much Money Can You Save by NOT Eating Out?
It costs about $25 for a family of four to buy a meal at a typical fast food restaurant. Averaging just two trips per week totals $50; continuing the pattern each week over the course of a full year comes to $2600.

A daily fast food lunch runs at least $5; in a typical five day work week, that’s $25. Over the course of a year, $1300. Just for lunch. Just for one person. How many people in your household might be doing that?

At mid-priced restaurants—Appleby’s, Ruby Tuesday, etc–$40 for a couple is pretty standard. Done weekly over the course of a year exceeds $2000. For a family of four it double to $4000. That’s starting to look like an annual grocery budget for a typical family, and all we’ve satisfied is one meal per week.

Some households eat dinner out two or three times per week, so we can multiply accordingly and see that thousands of dollars can be spent with little effort or concern.