savi.you

Here's a great recipe for those busy nights where you don't want to spend money on take out but don't have much time to cook. This is an all in one meal that takes no more than 20 minutes to cook. It's delicious AND nutritious!

Just brown, boil, sautee and toss everything together. Serve with a glass of red wine if you want to be a little fancy!


Ingredients...
1lb italian sausage
1lb fresh spinach
1lb penne, I used whole wheat
4 or 5 cloves of garlic...more = better
1/4 cup EVOO
1/4 cup pecorino romano
chili pepper flakes
kosher salt



Prep...
Remove casing from the sausage.
Rough chop garlic or slice thinly if you don't like biting into chunks of it.
Fill pot with water and turn on the heat.


Cook...
Brown the sausage over med to med-high heat, breaking it up as you go.
Once water reaches a rapid boil, add a palmful of salt. Toss in your pasta. Cook for 10 to 11 minutes depending on your liking.
Remove the sausage when all pink is gone and let it drain on some paper towels.


In the same pan you browned your sausage, pour in the EVOO. Sautee the garlic and chili flakes until fragrant...no more than 20-30 secs. DON'T let the garlic brown!


Toss in all of the spinach...it may look like a lot, but spinach will cook down to almost nothing.


The secret for this step is not over cooking the spinach. Sautee over med-high heat until the point where most of the leaves have barely wilted.

Remove from the heat and set the spinach aside. The pasta should have been almost done by now. Mix the sausage back in with the spinach.

When the pasta is finished, drain the water and reserve about a cup of the pasta water. Pour the sausage and spinach into the pasta pot along with the penne. Add the romano cheese on top.

Pour the pasta water in and toss everything together. Serve immediately, topped with additional cheese and chili flakes if you desire.


And the most important final step...ENJOY!

Every year, like many families in America, we take a trip to the beach. For us, it usually consists of an overpriced 3-night stay in Ocean City, MD. After a less than desirable experience at a crummy hotel with intermittent hot water and a shower that smelled of raw sewage, I decided that we'd try something a little different this year.

The initial plan was to rent a house in the Rehobeth area or Cape May with my in-laws...sounds like fun huh? However, my good buddy Mike, came to me out of the blue and asked if we'd like to vacation with his family at the Outerbanks in NC! The price was good and since I love visiting new places, I accepted the offer.

Mike is involved in an investment group that owns some vacation properties in New Jersey and North Carolina. We'll be staying at a gorgeous beach house in Avon, which is located on Hatteras Island, a 72 mile stretch of the Outer Banks from Nags Head to Ocracoke Island.

The vacation will last a full week, so there's a lot of preparation involved. For me, it's half the fun of going away! This will be our first trip ever to NC as a family. Our Google'd ETA is approximately 8.5 hours, but for us, it'll probably be closer to 10. The plan is to leave on Saturday night and arrive sometime Sunday morning.

My girls, ages 2 and 5 do not travel long distances very well. My 5 year old gets car sick before the car even starts moving and our 2 year old is, well, a 2 year old. Our longest drive we've done are the trips to OCMD, which takes us over 5 hours, with several stops. We're attempting to drive most of the time while they are asleep in the car, so hopefully that helps. I'm curious to see how this will pan out.

If anyone has any tips on how to survive a car trip with young children or "things-to-do" ideas for when we're down in the OBX, please comment. Well, I'd better get back to work. 3 more days until we hit the road!