Baked Penne with Sausage

Tonight was comfort food night at the Moore house. We got the Williams-Sonoma Comfort Food cookbook from work (working in a library has its advantages) and it is just stunningly beautiful. Most of the dishes are not even remotely vegetarian friendly and a lot of them would be difficult to impossible to create meatless versions. We did decide to try the baked ziti with sausage recipe with vegetarian sausage. The sausage was okay, but in the future we will use faux sausage crumbles rather than links. We also switched out the ziti with penne because we found a whole grain penne.

Baked spaghetti has been a staple in our house, so we decided to try another approach with it. And this recipe did have some additions that we will reuse in the future, namely red pepper flake in the sauce. We both agree that most anything can be made tastier with red pepper flake. Also the addition of roasted eggplant was much needed.

We give this one 4 out of 5 stars. The added plus is that we have plenty of left overs for lunches this week. Oh good God, I just said that. My life is sad sometimes.

Stay away from the Tofurky Italian Sausage (the dish was good despite this part)

 sauce with roasted eggplant and sausage

 pre-bake

more pictures here

Lime and Honey Glazed Salmon with Warm Black Bean and Corn Salad

Once again, we went to the cookbook, Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats, and once again it payed off. Say what you will about how annoying she can be, Rachael can cook and her recipes rock the house. The name of this dish explains it rather well, but it doesn't tell you just how tasty the salad is. I thought the fish was great, but Laura thought it was a bit too "fishy." Next time I will cook her piece a bit longer and hopefully it will be more to her liking. We did mess up in that we accidentally doubled the lime juice in the fish glaze which took away from the honey flavor, I will try and not do that again.

Overall we give this one 4 out of 5 stars (with 5 stars easy on the salad).

 Spice mixture for the salad: garlic, red pepper flakes, cumin, salt and pepper.

We fear the non-stick pan, so this got a little messy

Salad is made of onion (we used yellow rather than red), red bell pepper, corn, black beans, baby spinach and fresh cilantro

Mushroom and Sun-dried Tomato Risotto

I have to start this out by saying Mmmmmmm!  Risotto is delicious.  Mushroom and sun-dried tomato risotto is the most delicious thing.  Ever.  That being said, you have to have time.  And patience.  But mostly time (and a really supportive pair of shoes).  This recipe was from Vegan With a Vengeance.  The recipe was simple to follow, but it required a lot of time standing over the stove with almost constant stirring.  This is best done with another person so you can stir in shifts .  Do not, under any circumstances, send your husband to the store for a bottle of wine while you make it, or you can end up tired and cranky.  I'm just saying.  The payoff is worth it, as it is creamy mushroom deliciousness.  

We subbed dried porcini mushrooms instead of the ones the recipe called for.  It was a definite 5 out of 5 stars.  We'll be making this one again as soon as I'm fully recovered.

 mmmmmmmm

more pictures here