Whole-Wheat Spaghetti With Sausage & Chard

Found this recipe on RecipeZaar and changed it up a bit:

Whole-Wheat Penne With Sausage, Chard, and Artichoke Hearts

* coarse salt and black pepper
* 12 ounces whole wheat penne (I only had whole what spaghetti... pasta is pasta I figure)
* 2 tablespoons olive oil (I use my spray bottle so less than 2tbsp)
* 3/4 lb chicken sausage, removed from casing (1 1/2 spicy chicken sausages from the Italian Market)
* 1 (9 ounce) box frozen artichoke hearts, thawed (I wish we had some...)
* 1 lb swiss chard, cleaned stems and leaves separated and chopped
* 3 garlic cloves, minced
* 1/3 cup sun-dried tomato, sliced
* 1 tablespoon tomato paste
* 3/4 cup grated parmesan cheese, plus more for serving (about 2 ounces)
* 1/3 cup chopped fresh basil leaf (I used dried)
* 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1. Set a large pot of salted water to boil for pasta. Meanwhile, in a large nonstick skillet, heat 1 tablespoon oil over medium. Add sausage and cook, stirring occasionally and breaking sausage into pieces, until cooked through and lightly browned, 10 to 12 minutes.

2. Add remaining oil, chard stems, artichoke hearts, and garlic; season with salt and pepper. Cook until chard stems soften slightly, 3 to 5 minutes. Add chard leaves and cook, stirring, until wilted, 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

3. Add pasta to boiling water; cook until 2 minutes short of al dente. Add sun-dried tomatoes and cook 2 minutes. Reserve 1 cup pasta water and drain pasta; return to pot.

4. Pour half of reserved pasta water into a small bowl. Add tomato paste and whisk to combine. Add tomato paste mixture, sausage mixture, Parmesan, basil, and red pepper flakes to pasta in pot. Toss to combine, adding reserved pasta water if necessary. Season with salt and pepper.

For dessert..... Jason walked to Mac's and got me one of these....

... and a scratch ticket! I love love love oreo ice cream / cookies and cream but had never had one of these. It was VERY good. I didn't win anything on the scratch ticket though.

JASON'S REVIEW: Nothing so tasty has ever touched my lips before (I told him nobody takes these seriously anymore)

MY REVIEW: Although I followed the instructions very closely, the chard stems were still pretty hard. Other than that, it was good. Make sure to cut your sun dried tomatoes REALLY small because a huge hunk of that is pretty nasty/salty. Since I had to open a new can of tomato paste to snag a tablespoon, I put the rest of the can in the freezer. I wonder how that will work out?

I also took this evening to pre-cook some chicken and freeze it for camping on the weekend. Jason and I are both SUPER paranoid about chicken and usually spend about 2 hours burning our dinner over the fire before we feel comfortable eating it. I don't know why I never thought of this before! I cooked up some diced chicken breast so we could have chicken curry and also the rest of the chicken sausage for a vegetable stew. 
 

Don't be looking forward to a new post tomorrow as it is my $1500, 3 hour dentist appointment. I am not looking forward to that..... HOWEVER, if you like big fancy cakes, be sure to check back on Wednesday!

Italian Style Swiss Chard

We had my parents over for dinner this evening and, thanks to my mom reminded me, I took this quick photo after I'd already had a few bites.

So of course there's the salad - the same salad we eat every night because we have SO much lettuce! Then mashed potatoes with kale which has also become a dinner staple around here. The sausages are turkey cranberry and they came from the Italian Market. This is the second time we've had them and they're great. Actual pieces of cranberry in the sausage make it delicious. I tried a new recipe for swiss chard from RecipeZaar:


Ingredients

2 lbs swiss chard
1 1/3 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic (minced or pressed)
2/3 tablespoon capers, mashed
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Trim stem ends of chard. Thinly slice stems crosswise up to base of leaves; set slices aside. Reserve a few whole leaves to line serving dish; coarsely chop remaining leaves.

2. In a 6 to 8 quart pan over medium high heat, stir oil, garlic and capers until garlic is slightly softened, about 2 minutes. Add chard stems; stir until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in chopped leaves, part at a time if pan if full, cover and cook until wilted, about 4 minutes.

3. Mix in vinegar; season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish a serving dish with reserved chard leaves; spoon greens along side.

For dessert, we had Jasons saskatoon pie! I apologize for the picture quality - again I forgot to take a picture of the actual slice so I only have half of the pie in its plate.

If anyone's interested in the recipe, you'll have to leave me a comment and I'll get Jason to type it out. The filling was super good and pastry flaky as always.

JASONS REVIEW: The swiss chard was a good change from just straight up steamed. It added alot of flavour. The pie was very good. I can't believe everyone is so astonished that I can make good pastry - it's easier than it looks!

MY REVIEW: I really liked the swiss chard. I could have let it sit in the pot a little longer as some of the stems were still a little hard but the flavour was very good. The pie was fabulous and I look forward to leftovers tomorrow. I COULD NEVER MAKE PASTRY.

My pictures have all been cell phone pictures lately and not looking so hot! I will be sure to bring out the big camera sometime this week and post some pictures of my garden as it's been doing great.