Wow, my third (?!) post of the day. I just wanted to let you know how dinner turned out 🙂 The fresh pasta, pesto, chicken sausage and grape tomatoes turned out well. My mom even finished her entire serving, which is always a good sign. I just love fresh pasta – it is such a treat.

I like this meal because I used something from our freezer. Our freezer at home has a lot of food in it. So whenever I can use something from this storage unit, I feel like I have accomplished something. I had two different types of chicken sausages in the freezer and I used one of each, a garlic rosemary and a sweet Italian sausage. I like the garlic rosemary the best. Both types were from Trader Joes. 😀

To thin out my basil pesto, I used a tip from Bittman. I used 1/3 of a cup (maybe a little less?) of pasta water to thin out the pesto – after that it was perfect for tossing the pasta in. I also topped the pasta with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

For dessert I made a chocolate bread pudding. I grated two individual pieces of Dove dark chocolate, so the pudding was not overly chocolate. I was making a small amount of pudding, so I quickly glanced at a couple of recipes (Bittman and Martha) and took what I could from them. I added vanilla, a tiny pinch of salt, a half a handful of sugar, lots of cinnamon, some nutmeg, 1 cup of 1% milk (and a little more after) 1/8 cup of light cream and one egg. I warmed up the milk / cream and spices and then mixed in the chocolate shavings. I poured it over the bread pieces (one inch cubes of a french baguette). Then I beat the one egg, and then stirred it into my mixture. It baked at 350 for about 36 minutes.

The final product (it’s not really photogenic):

My dish:

Yeah, definitely not the prettiest thing in the world. But it tasted good! I really like the fact that I used a lot less sugar, and it was not overly sweet. There was just a touch of chocolate and just a tad of sweetness from the sugar. I could have used more vanilla.

Well, that is a wrap. I’m exhausted and will be heading to bed soon! See ya’ll tomorrow.