long arm quilt, tutorial for dinner

On Wednesday morning (7/9), Michael left at 7:10 AM for golf here at SCCL….that’s an incredibly early tee time…but since temps have been in the 90’s (it seems like FOREVER) it’s better he gets out early.  I got a few things done around the house (including totally finishing my quilt binding on one side) before leaving at 9 for the farmer’s market and then a lesson at the store on my long arm.  The lesson was wonderful….but TOO LONG!!!  I hadn’t had anything to eat and finally got to leave at 12:30.  I made myself stop at WALMART to return something…then raced home and made a HUGE fruit smoothie.  Michael was already home…feeling pretty darn satisfied with his 82 J.  I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the binding on my first ever quilt (small though it may be) done on the long arm:

this is the magic 9 patch pattern

I’m taking it to quilting on Thursday for show and tell AND for stitching down my label.  Then it will go on the pile of charity quilts.

 So….my freezer (on my fridge) is totally full…the freezer I have in the garage is totally full….my neighbors freezer across the street (which they let me use in exchange for lots of dinners J) is totally full…so I’ve decided I need to make a conscious effort to clean out these freezers.  Every morning (if I need to make dinner that night….meaning no leftovers, or not going out) I take something out of the freezer and thaw it out.  Once I figure out what it is (oh yes…I am the QUEEN of ‘oh…I’ll know what this is…I don’t have to label it') I build dinner around it.  I’ve only started doing that this week (and have cleaned out 3 packages so far)…so this morning, I took out a package of chicken sausage…and I ended up making a wonderful dinner…here comes another tutorial:

here are most of the ingredients I used

heat oil in skillet; saute onions and mushrooms until carmelized a bit

add in sausage (it was already fully cooked), saute until browned

none of my fresh tomatoes are ripe yet, so I used a can of diced tomatoes
and a tbsp of oregano

add in 3 handfulls of spinach

the cooked pasta (the sausage was 8 oz...so I made 3 servings of pasta which
was 6 oz of dried pasta...whatever shape you like...we used thin, whole wheat
spaghetti

toss everything together....I also put in 1/4 cup of jarred sauce that I needed
to use up from the fridge

finish tossing and serve

I had about 1/3 cup of mozzarella in the fridge that I also needed
to use up...so I sprinkled it on...but it would have been great without it also.
 

 

Even though Michael has told me forever that he doesn’t like sausage…he said dinner was excellent!  We got cleaned up from dinner just in time for me to SKYPE with Janice!!!!  It was so cool!!!!  Instead of our weekly phone call…we had a SKYPE session and it was awesome (except for the fact that BOTH of us hated what we look like!!)…we’re going to try to do that from now on instead of phoning.  After that I settled in to watching TV with my honey and knitting on the baby sweater.