dinner #9: pasta with sausage and sumer squash

This is probably going to be my one and only tribute to Sandra Lee and her niche in the foodie world. For anyone ignorant as to who she is: Sandra Lee hosts "Semi-homemade with Sandra Lee" on the Food Network, a show devoted to simplifying cooking by jazzing up already prepared foods (think store-bought pound cake with homemade strawberry compote and Cool Whip). While I personally don't agree with Sandra's approach to cooking, I have found that it perfectly suits one of my favorite lazy lunches:

Easy Mac.

(Please note that this is Annie's Easy Mac, not the blue box kind... I still have some taste).

I LOVE dressing up easy mac or boxed macaroni and cheese with sautéed Brussels sprouts or asparagus or peas and prosciutto, or even oven roasted beets and caramelized onions. There is something so much more satisfying to me about eating packaged pasta when it is practically being suffocated under a mound of vegetables. I'd like to think that, in the realm of college lunches, this still borders on gourmet.

I decided to apply my macaroni logic to last night's dinner (though I excluded the dehydrated cheese sauce from the equation). Instead I bought a pound of rotini pasta, a pound of uncooked chicken pesto sausage, and a bunch of summer squash and some onions. I chopped the squash and onions and roasted them with some dried basil, thyme, salt and pepper. I sautéed the sausage and cooked the pasta when the vegetables were close to finished, then tossed them together in the same pot I used to cook the pasta. I added some cream and grated Pecornio Romano (were you aware that Pecornio Romano is the new Parmegianno Reggiano?), mixed it all together and called it a day.

That's all.

Oh, you probably want a more precise recipe. That will have to wait as I refuse to miss salsa dancing for the blog.

And I PROMISE to put up the panzanella recipe soon! But be forewarned: classes start on Thursday. This could affect future posts. We'll see how everything goes.