Pesto Pasta!

In November I found how to make my Zupas grilled cheeses...and bought a thing of pesto from Sam's Club....which means I still have a ton of it... I don't know how long it is good for, but I have been looking for recipes that use pesto that I am not also allergic to, and finally found one that my husband also thought sounded good enough to try. I made THIS last night and it was a winner! The only complaint was the child who doesn't like tomatoes didn't want them. :)

This time I followed the exact (easy) instructions, but I'm copying them here in case the link is ever not working.

Ingredients:
2.5 cups or 8 oz uncooked rotini pasta
1 tbsp olive oil
1 round chicken sausage (photo below...)
1 1/4 cups frozen peas
3/4 cup basil pesto
1 cup Italian cheese blend (I used the mozzarella and parmesan that I had)
1 tomato, chopped (I only chopped half a roma tomato and it was plenty to top the skillet with)

Cook the pasta according to the directions. Set aside. Heat oil in skillet. Add sliced sausage and brown. Then add cooked pasta, frozen peas and pesto. Stir, and warm thru, about 5-7 minutes. Top with cheese and tomato, and cover on the hot burner for 2-3 minutes.
Serve!

*My husband thought zucchini would be much better than peas, so we'll have to try that in the summer. He also thought maybe not using the olive oil, but the sausage stuck to my pan like crazy, and I think it needed the oil. Then the pesto worked to help de-glaze the pan. So I'd stick with the recommended measurements...

This is the sausage the picture made me think of, and this was also the only chicken sausage I could find at my store, so that's what we did. It was very tasty, but we also really like sausage in our house.

Broccoli Cheese Soup

I was starting to just pin the online recipes we're using... You can find the recipes I'm interested in trying HERE and the recipes we have tried and enjoyed are HERE. And yes, certainly, some are also found on this blog. *grin
But making tonight's dinner we didn't follow the instructions, and I want to record how we made it. Because I hate washing dishes by hand and at this point in our lives I feel like I can only "make" my kids wash hand dishes once a week, and I was not going to dirty a bunch of dishes for one pot of soup! You can find the original recipe and instructions HERE. We stuck to the ingredients, just put them in the pot in different orders.

I started by putting 1/4 cup butter in the pot and letting it start to melt. Then I dumped three cups of half-thawed chopped broccoli in, and the salt and pepper, and let it heat thru, stirring not quite constantly but more than occasionally...
Then, I poured in the turkey stock we made after Thanksgiving and froze, with a heaping tablespoon of dehydrated onion (but only because I was pulling out stuff for dinner when I discovered we were out of onions). I brought that to a boil and let it all simmer on medium high heat to soften the broccoli and re-hydrate the onions.
I added the 1/3 cup flour and whisked it in completely. Then I slowly poured in the 2 cups of milk, not heated, and continued whisking...We added maybe a teaspoon of granulated garlic, and about a teaspoon of onion salt too.
When it was fully heated thru again I slowly added the shredded swiss, and then the shredded cheddar, continually whisking, and making sure each handful of cheese was fully incorporated before adding more.
And then we served it with slices of French bread and a glass of milk!

It turned out great- even the child who said "it has too much broccoli flavor" ate it right up! Yeay for cold, rainy days, and hot, creamy soup!

9/21/17 ETA
Today is supposed to be the first really cold evening this autumn, and it is a jam-packed evening at my house. We're going to have a late dinner of this broccoli soup, done in the crock pot.

And just in case the link stops working, the ingredients are listed here:

• 1 3/4 cups chicken broth
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups milk
• 1 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese, preferably sharp or extra sharp
• 1/2 cup shredded swiss cheese
• 2 1/2 to 3 cups chopped, lightly steamed or blanched broccoli