Pumpkin For Dinner

It has been awhile since I posted anything here. But some recent changes have given me a few ideas, starting with food.

As I will be home somewhat early three nights a week, and Courtney will be working, I will be cooking much more often. I love trying new food, and Ashley likes picking out recipes, it's a good combination!

On Friday Ashley decided she wanted something different for dinner so we went through the recipe stack and Ashley picked something interesting. Baked Pumpkin and Sausage Rigatoni (found in Family Circle magazine) sounded like a perfect fall dish. After a quick run to the store, we got to work.

Ashley helped for a bit, but Austin pulled her outside to play soccer. I made a salad to go with it with veggies from the local farmers market.

The voting -
Courtney: "It's pretty good, but the sausage is too hot."
Josh: "It tastes really good, but is very rich. I can't eat that much of it."
Ashley: "I love it!"
Austin: "It's good, do I have to eat the salad?"

It only took about 20 minutes to prep for the oven, so it will become part of the fall repertoire. About half of the dish survived dinner, so good for work lunches also.

Baked Pumpkin and Sausage Rigatoni
Makes 8 servings
4 links (12oz) hot Italian sausage without casings
1 can (29 oz) solid-pack pumpkin
1 pound mezzi rigatoni
1 1/2 cups milk
4 oz Neufchâtel cheese
1 cup and 2 tablespoons grated Asiago cheese
1/3 cup panko bread crumbs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh Sage
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat oven to 350°. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to boiling.

Add sausage to a large skillet set over medium heat. Cook 8 to 10 minutes or until browned, breaking apart with a wooden spoon. Stir in Sage and cook 1 minute. Remove with a slotted spoon; set aside. Pour off and discard drippings.

In the same skillet, whisk the pumpkin, milk, Neufchâtel cheese, egg yolks, 1 cup of Asiago, nutmeg, pumpkin pie spice, and salt. Stir over medium heat until cheeses are melted.

Meanwhile, cook rigatoni in boiling water 1 minute less than the package directions, about 9 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the pasta water. Return pasta to the pot. Stir in sausage, pumpkin mixture and reserved pasta water. Mix well to combine. Transfer to a 13x9x2 inch dish and top with the panko bread crumb and the remaining 2 tablespoons of Asiago. Bake at 350° for 20 minutes. Turn the broiler on high and broil for 1 or two minutes or until the top is lightly browned.

No, my wrists aren't broken

I would point out that I can be a bit of a slacker, but I did that once already.

The truth is that I wanted to carve out time to write properly and "in peace", and that has become all but impossible. The quiet time I get is currently spent taking practice quizzes and (finally) reading my Accounting book. Nothing like them being out of the book you need until half way though the semester. 

I may find more time once I finish setting the office back up. I have fixed one of the desks and put it back in the room, but there are still half a dozen boxes that need to be sorted, labeled, and put back into the storage closet. 

I know what I want to do with this blog, it's just finding the time to do it.

I can't dance

Really, I can't dance. I never had the body rhythm needed to do anything more than slow dancing, and even then my partners feet could be in jeopardy. At school dances this was never a problem, if I had a date all I did was slow dance, otherwise I just hung out with the guys.

As an adult I have never wanted to go out dancing. I am highly self conscious of the fact that I can't dance well and stick out like a sore thumb on the dance floor. I mildly dreaded certain functions (weddings in particular) when I knew that I would be pulled onto the dance floor. I used liquid courage to get myself moving when the music started, and it worked well enough for me.

For a long time when my wife wanted to go out dancing with friends I opted to stay home and watch the kids. Courtney really wanted me to go, but was very kind about letting me off the hook. Not all that long ago I decided to change how I approached life in general, and in particular things that I wasn't comfortable with. So when it came time to go dancing again, I went.

Our friend Shawn likes to go to the Sky Club above Sangria on Thursdays. Yesterday Courtney and I joined her and left Josh in charge of the house. We had already decided not too stay out too late, so I knew that even if I was making a total idiot of myself it wouldn't be for more than a couple hours.

Much to my surprise, I figured out how not to step on my own feet and had a blast. I stuck with water for most of the night, having a single $4 Corona during our last break from the dance floor. The club was packed and that helped some as well, hard to stick out when there isn't a lot of room to move anyway.

Next time Courtney wants to go dancing, I'll be first in line.

Pandora

Months ago my brother-in-law told me about Pandora. He raved about it's music selection and your ability to tailor the "radio" play list to your personal tastes.

I was used to using Winamp and it's stations that are set by type and never checked it out. Now I wish I had.

Pandora has changed the way I listen to music at work. It runs in your web browser (unless you purchase the premium edition) and I haven't noticed any slow down of my PC from it. It seems to be well compressed as it doesn't hamper my web browsing speed, and the network admin hasn't come to kill me for using all the bandwidth.

But the best part is the "stations" you can create. Just pick a song or artist and it creates a station around that music type. If a song pops up that you can't stand, just check to remove it and it won't be played on any station that you create. If you want more variety in a station, just add more artists or songs to it.

I have different stations now for whatever mood I'm in. Today it is Rock, but last week it was all Classical. Bad days tend to get a Heavy Metal sound track, it's like putting out a "Do Not Disturb" sign for non-critical questions.

The only down side is that you can only listen for 40 hours a month, after that they will ask for a small donation ($0.99) to listen more. I haven't hit that yet but I know I will at some point. However the limit does not apply if you buy the premium version, and for only $36 a year I may do that.

Time to list more on ebay so I can use my PayPal account...

Love Dare: Day 18

This took a lot longer to pull off than I planned. I originally decided what I wanted to cook almost 3 months ago now, and bought it two months ago. But before I start in on the details, here is the love dare itself:

Love Seeks to Understand

Prepare a special dinner at home, just for the two of you. The dinner can be as nice as you prefer. Focus this time on getting to know your spouse better, perhaps in areas you've rarely talked about. Determine to make it an enjoyable evening for you and your mate.

I ended up deciding to move ahead with the dinner despite my lack of a plan to reduce the number of children in the house. Courtney had mentioned several times recently that she missed me doing the love dares. I wasn't about to skip one, so I set a date and started making plans.

Step one was to feed the kids beforehand, something easy and hopefully filling enough to get them into the basement or their bedrooms for several hours. Hot dogs and salad worked well, even if corralling them in a remote location didn't. Josh and Ashley are more than old enough to know when to keep themselves occupied. However Austin had other ideas, though I think that only a couple of interruptions in two hours is pretty good for a three year old. Bella is a puppy, and behaved that way. Though I think our floors remained unsoiled for the duration of dinner.

Getting things together for our dinner was not as easy, I was making Cornish Game Hen for the first time and my Mom hadn't made it in so long she didn't have any pointers. The internet came to the rescue and provided me with a recipe that sounded good, though some of the ingredients were hard to come by. Fennel Seeds, red pepper flakes, kosher salt, Thyme branches, and shallots all needed to be hunted down.

I had already found most of what I needed months ago, and thankfully an herb garden was part of our recent "eating healthy and cheap" initiative so the Thyme branches were not an issue. The rest of the spices were relativly easy to find once I had stared at the spice section in Kroger for awhile.

I had searched for shallots before and didn't have any luck. I was planning to go find them the day I was going to cook the dinner, but Courtney wanted to get out of the house for a bit so she decided to take up the quest. Two stores later and a small grocer telling her that they were just green onions (they aren't) we gave up and used green onions anyway.

After returning home Courtney was starving, so she ate some with the kids and I started cooking. It is a fairly straight forward recipe, I just had to adjust it to 2 birds instead of three and forget about completing the "fine herbs" portion. Just stuff the birds, make the "rub" and apply it, and cook for 75 minutes.

I made some wild rice when it was almost ready, and took the salad out of the fridge. Courtney and I spent the entire prep and cooking time talking and nibbling on what was left of the dinner for the kids. The only downside was that our nibbling whetted our appetites and we ended up not finishing our hens. Live and learn.

We had a nice candlelight dinner anyway, with relatively few interruptions. Speaking of learning, next time I start my shallot hunt long before it's time to make dinner.