Last week was a busy week. There was a leftover pizza night and a soup and grilled cheese night, each preceeded by a 'what am I going to serve for dinner' moment. It was one of those weeks. The only bright spot was that I didn't run out of milk, but only because I'd bought way more than the sleep-over boys could drink. (Because really, mom, why would they drink milk when you had cans of root-beer and ginger ale on hand? sigh. Yes, a better mother would have had only milk and sliced fruit to go with the pizza, but I was just winging it.)
There was one small, shining moment of decent eating in the middle of this work-life-unbalance. Pasta soup. This was winging it to the max - no recipe, no plan, just making the most of two frozen italian sausages, some slightly dehydrated carrots rattling around in the bottom of the crisper, dried pasta, boxed broth and some frozen duxelles. The sausages were sliced and browned, deglazed the pan and added the carrots and broth, brought to a boil, added duxelles and pasta and cooked for 8 minutes. Done.
I put it on the table and, glad it wasn't pizza, dished it up. Nothing fancy, but it was hot and satisfying. It felt good, in the middle of all the chaos, to remember that sometimes simple is the better balance to busy.
No recipe tonight, since this was mostly about making a little bit of peace from the chaos.
