The Blog Reboot: Mistakes Were Made*

After I wrote my first four blogs, it seemed to me that the only person reading them was my Mom. And even she hadn't read all of them. I decided to write them less frequently...which turned into never. Somehow a year-and-a-half flew by before I was recently inspired to take up my blog again - readers or no readers - and write blog #5.

For my latest meal, I looked to Real Simple. I have always been a huge fan of Real Simple and have made several successful recipes from the pages of the magazine. Although I had purchased the Real Simple "meals made easy" cookbook a few years ago, until tonight I had not made anything out of it. The book is divided up into sections such as "no-shop meals" and "one-pot meals". I chose a recipe from the "30-minute meals" section entitled "Pasta with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage".

The picture makes the dish look delicious and my kids like both pasta and broccolini (which I mistakenly thought was interchangeable with broccoli rabe: mistake #1).

I chose rigatoni for our pasta as I love the size and chewy texture of it.

The recipe called for either "chicken or pork sausage, casings removed" so I wasn't sure exactly what type of sausage to buy. When I was at the butcher counter I had to choose between Italian sausage (hot or sweet), bratwurst, chicken apple, and so forth. I ended up choosing a simple pork "breakfast sausage" as it had a little bit of red pepper flake in it. The recipe called for me to add red pepper flakes but, since I knew my kids would not like very much of it, having a tiny bit of the spice in the sausage added some flavor without turning my kids off to the entire dish. When I was cooking tonight, the first step was to remove the casings from the sausages. There were seven of them and the process is always messy and somewhat time consuming. I don't think this was counted in the "30-minutes." I should have started cooking dinner a bit sooner: mistake #2.

While the recipe called for "2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced," I decided to mince the garlic instead since my kids would push aside any sliced garlic on their plate.

Now to the broccoli rabe. I went into a Whole Foods market intending to purchase some broccolini (again, I mistakenly believed this was the same as broccoli rabe) but found that they were out of it. I next went into our local produce market which did not have broccolini but did have broccoli rabe. I noticed that the bunches of broccoli rabe seemed to be mostly leaves with a few florets. I was in a hurry at that point so I just bought two huge bunches of the stuff, thinking that I could pick out all of the florets. In reality, there were very few florets and the ones I picked out were very small and quickly disintegrated into small green particles upon cooking. I did add some of the leaves but those were, as I expected, not a hit with the kids.

I never seem to learn my lesson about reading an entire recipe before I start cooking so I missed that I was adding 4 Tablespoons of butter to the recipe. I saw butter in the ingredient list but skimmed over the amount. Since my husband avoids foods with added butter or oils, I knew that he was not going to eat the meal I was preparing (and, honestly, he's not a fan of pasta either so his consumption of the dish was already in question): mistake #3. In good news (for my cooking - otherwise it was not good news!), my husband got home super late from work tonight, thereby avoiding the issue of whether or not he would be joining us for dinner.

I served the pasta in large, shallow, white, pasta bowls. I love these bowls and rarely take them off the shelf so I was happy to be using them.  My daughter was fairly quiet as she began to eat the pasta so I knew she didn't particularly care for it. My son, on the other hand, had a second helping and asked that the remainder be included in his school lunch tomorrow. I personally enjoyed the dish although it was a little bit on the bland side (adding the suggested red pepper flakes would no doubt have added the needed punch). Unfortunately, as my broccoli rabe disintegrated upon cooking, my dish did not look pretty, or even particularly appetizing: mistake #4.

Dirty Dish Count: a large saucepan, a large frying pan with lid, a curved spatula, a small bowl, a cutting board, a knife, a large measuring cup, a colander, a garlic tube (that helps peel the garlic), a garlic press, and one of those silicone daisy-shaped things that prevent the pasta from boiling over.

Next time I will carefully read my recipe before I purchase ingredients (making sure I actually know what said ingredients are!). Wish me luck!

*I borrowed this title from Stephan Pastis' (Pearls Before Swine cartoonist) first Timmy Failure book.