Red (Kidney) Beans & Rice

My neighbor, Chris, gave me his mom's "Red Beans and Rice" recipe back in November 2011. I've made it a few times since then, and I've altered it to my liking, but I put the original recipe (that Chris sent me) at the bottom of the post.

Spicy Italian Sausage & Lentil Soup

I was talking to the Chopping Block about lentil soup earlier and how we find it rather bland. So I decided to try to liven this soup up with some spice and lots and lots of meat. Okay, so maybe this is more like a hearty sausage soup with a dash of lentils, but whatever, it's all good. I made this soup twice, once with some Italian sausages from the butcher and once with some pre-cooked sausages from the deli aisle. I recommend the butcher stuff. The photo above was with the pre-cooked stuff.

Ricotta with Spinach and Sausage Stuffed Pasta Shells

Another recipe taken from Simply Recipes. I might was well make a rule that I would only make food from Simply Recipes.

I first know of this dish from eating in the UCSF Mt. Zion hospital cafeteria. It was actually pretty good because they make a new entree dish every day so I get to try new things everyday. Their ricotta stuffed pasta shell dish used really really large pasta shells. The shells were the size of my palm!

Pasta with Pumpkin and Sausage

I asked the Chopping Block what I should cook, and she suggested a pumpkin recipe from Martha Stewart, except I thought that it wouldn't turn out very well. I think pumpkin has a pretty mild taste, and I didn't think it'd work with pasta. After some searching around, I found a Rachel Ray recipe, albeit I'm not a fan, but it looked more promising than Martha Stewart's.

"Jambalaya"

One of my favorite dishes to order of all time is jambalaya but it had never occured to me to make it. When I start making it, I started to break the rules by using angle hair pasta instead of rice and adding mushrooms to it. Hence, the quotes around "Jambalaya." Enough blah blah, on to the cooking, please!