Sausage Spaghetti

Remember the dinner I had planned for last week that was sabotaged by a bacon-loving DDH and a carton of fresh eggs?

This is that dinner.

And the DDH liked it, after all.

So there.

It's super fast to make (a half hour or so), cheap, tasty, filling. Honestly, pasta with some sort of meat sauce is pretty much the perfect weeknight meal.

Sausage Spaghetti

Rustle up some sausage. This should be the crumbly kind like you'd get on a pizza. You can either buy it ground or buy links, cut them open, and remove the casings.

Use whatever kind of sausage you like. I used some spinach and feta chicken sausage from my meat co-op, because it's delicious.

Crumble it into a large skillet and cook until mostly done, about six minutes. You don't want it to get burnt or dried out, as you're going to simmer it for awhile in the sauce later, but you do want it safe to eat.

A note here: in a minute, I'm going to call for some marinara sauce. You can buy marinara sauce in a jar, I guess. Or you could take a can of tomato sauce and some seasonings and make your own. Since you're going to be simmering the sauce with the sausage, the flavors will have time to meld, so you can just stir some dried herbs into the tomato sauce now. I used one can tomato sauce, 1 tsp. basil, 1 tsp. oregano, 1/2 tsp. thyme, and 1/2 tsp. marjoram.

Remove from the pan and drain. I just put some paper towels on my cutting board and dumped it out there; if you want to get more grease off, put a colander inside a bowl and put the sausage into the colander so the grease drains into the bowl. Then throw the grease away--do not pour it down your sink.

Add to the sausage grease remaining in the pan (or you could wipe out the grease and use some olive oil) some finely chopped onion. Cook, stirring, about four minutes or until soft.

Add garlic, pressed and saute for another minute or so.

Personally I would use more than two cloves.
I'm just running out of my homegrown garlic already. :-(
Good thing I planted more this year. ^_^

Stir in your sausage, 1 1/2 cups tomato sauce, and 1/3 cup water. Bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer, fifteen to twenty minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a boil. Add some salt and a dash of olive oil.

Add spaghetti (or other pasta of your choice) to the water and cook according to package directions.

Toss the spaghetti into the sauce, stir it up to coat, and serve.

Apparently I never took a picture of the finished project. Just imagine this:

Plus this:

And it definitely equals yummy.