The Finer Things In Life

I thought I'd let you step into my kitchen for a few minutes today. What's cookin'?

Our family go-to meal. And it's delicious.

Excuse the crumbs on the floor. Clear off a spot at the bar. You can move the baby chair to the floor to make room. Ok, are you ready?

I've got the easiest, tastiest recipe ever.



You will need:

• bow tie pasta (half box)


• peas (we use the steamer bags)


• sausage


• alfredo sauce (half jar)

That's it! But if you want to get fancy, throw in some spices to taste and add some shallots, too. YU--UM!

It's so easy, you could probably figure it out yourselves.

1. Cut sausage into bite sized pieces and just cook it up in a skillet. Brown it, ya know. Then drain the grease (This is where our dear, sweet Holly expects the grease to be poured over her dog food!). Note: If you're getting fancy, you can add the spices and shallots here.


2. While you're preparing the sausage, get some water boiling for the pasta. I trust you can follow the directions on the box/bag. ;)


3. Stick pea bag in microwave (What? I told you it was easy).


4. When the pasta is done, drain the water, and mix in about half of the alfredo sauce.


5. Add sausage and peas to pasta and voila! Tastiest, easiest dish you'll ever make.

You're welcome. ;)

We also like to have red wine with this, but you do what you want! On Sunday, we had this meal with some Malbec. Usually, we claim our house wine to be the Wal-mart brand of Oak Leaf. We're not picky. This particular night, however, we were feeling fancy. Instead of the regular 3 dollar bottle, we splurged for the $14. Classy, I know. Anyway, we were partaking in our wine tasting techniques we learned on the North Island of New Zealand-

Imagine the scene. I'm sitting in my crazy print flannel pj's with Valentine slippers on my feet, hair is in a high ponytail. And if I'm confessing it all- my hair was in a high ponytail that was slightly off to the left. Captain J approaches me with my glass and cheese in his hand (not on a plate). He might as well have just taken the cheese out of the pocket of his Carhartts. He hands me the glass. We swish it around. We hold it up to our noses and pretend to detect various scents in the wine. We taste it. We close our eyes and savor. Next, we eat our cheese slices. Finally, we take another sip. And it's confirmed.

We still can't tell the difference from the really inexpensive wine from the regular inexpensive wine.

Captain J summed it up when he said, "The finer things in life are sometimes lost on people like us."