Recipe: Spaghetti with Italian Sausage & Haricots Verts with Shallot & Lemon
So, after 2-1/2 weeks off, I'm back to blogging. Although, I'm not really back to my cooking project. I didn't cook anything new from Williams-Sonoma tonight, but more on that in a second. See, there has been a lot going on and it's been a little hectic for me to cook the past few weeks. It's not a bad hectic though. In fact, it's all good. My Happy Place is taking a road trip! A permanent one. :) Yep, that's right. After 9 years of calling Parkersburg, West Virginia and the Mid-Ohio Valley home (15 years if you count my time at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio), I am bidding adieu to this fair town and will now be calling Wilmington, Delaware my new home. I will finally be able to shop for all the many obscure ingredients Williams-Sonoma throws at me and have a pretty high confidence of finding all of them. This is so very much a good thing. It's funny how quickly things in life can change. One moment, you feel utterly frustrated with your life. The next second you get a phone call and find out your life will be completely different and you have what you've wanted for a very long time. I applied for the new job I will take in Delaware about the same time I started my cooking experiment. And quite honestly, I think I owe a part of my life change to this experiment. In the beginning, I said I wanted this process of cooking foods I'd never cooked before to push me to get more bold with things in my life. And since my Linguine with Lobster Tarragon Sauce experiment over 3 months ago, I've started to evolve into a person that I'm really really starting to like. I'm starting to go after the things I want in life instead of curling up in a ball and just wishing things were different. It's amazing how much I've changed through this short time. And maybe all of the evolving I've done was in the cards for me anyway, and snipping fresh herbs or making pie crusts has had nothing to do with my newfound self-confidence. But somehow, I don't think it's a coincidence. This cooking journey has been a gift that I am still not quite sure I get the full impact of yet. But I am grateful for this adventure. And I don't care if it takes me 5 years to finish this cookbook. With the things I've gained from this experience after cooking just 18 recipes, I'm highly intrigued to see what I'll discover when all 360 are complete. So although I probably won't cook much of anything this month while I get ready to move, I will definitely be back in full gear once I'm settled in my new city! I've got more evolving to do. And a new city to do it all in. :-D
Okay, okay...enough of the mushy stuff. Back to my cooking. :) If you haven't noticed yet, one of the recipes in the title should look familiar. Yep, I made my HV's again. Don't worry, this isn't an obsessive love affair like I have with the Brussels Sprouts. I made an impromptu decision to cook tonight, and I knew the HV recipe had a short ingredients list and I could remember most of it off the top of my head. Although I did have to ask Sarah to help me remember a few things. And the spaghetti was another "Lashonda" original. And by original, I mean I took a jar of Classico spaghetti sauce, doctored it up with a bunch of stuff, and called it my own. Although I must say, it was very, very good. I actually only cooked because my original resident guinea pig, Terraun, is in town again. With all of the stuff I've been doing in preparation of moving (meeting with realtors, fixing up things to make the house more appealing for sale), I've been eating out a lot. But since I really do enjoy cooking for other people, I thought it would be good to cook tonight. So on impulse, I decided to whip up spaghetti and HV's. The spaghetti sauce was amazingly good. Only problem...I was sort of just throwing stuff in the Classico sauce so I'm not quite sure I can duplicate it. :) One thing I did add to the sauce that definitely helped make it amazing was Shiraz, a red wine. And red hot pepper flakes. Which could explain the heartburn I have while I sit here typing this. I also believe there were bottles of Oregano and Thyme pulled out of the cabinet. But don't quote me on that. I guess if I really wanted to duplicate it, I could. But then again, it was a lot more fun just making it up as I went along. Some say life is the same way. You can sit and try to just duplicate what you've seen other people do. Or you can have fun and make it up as you go along. See I tell ya, who knew there were so many life lessons to be found in the kitchen. No wonder it's My Happy Place. :)
