Italian Sausage Pasta & Mother's Day Bouquet

I haven't updated this site in awhile....but didn't think I was gone for THAT long, but the setting on this site changed! Still trying to get used to it!

Anyway, I'm still cooking, just not much time to blog. Today I want to share my pasta dish: Italian Sausage Pasta:

1.5 cup of dried pasta (I used Garofalo organic pasta)
4 Italian Pork Sausages (or any other sausages)
5 cloves of garlic (sliced) half an onion (sliced)
1 cup fresh spinach
1/2 cup cooked quinoa olive oil
Dash of dried basil
Dash of black pepper
Dash of salt
Dash of chili pepper (optional)

1) Cook pasta according to package, drain and pour into a bowl, toss in olive oil, dried basil, black pepper, and salt. Mix well then cover to keep warm.
2) In a big pan, cook sausages with olive oil until cook through, remove from pan. (OR, you can remove the outer skin of the sausage and cook it like minced italian pork, works just as well!)
3) Add in onions and garlic in pan, drizzle alittle more olive oil and let them cook until tender, while onion and garlic are cooking, cut sausages into bit size.
4) Return sausage to the pan and let the onions and garlic work it's magic with the sausage.
5) Add in pasta and spinach to the pan, cook until spinach soften, mix occassionally to avoid pasta sticking to the bottom of the pan, add chili pepper if desired and more salt to taste if needed.
6) Add in cooked quinoa and toss until fully blended. This will give the pasta a "nutty" flavor.
7) Serve!

Mr. P loves pasta and he actually like this! So once a week I would whip up something similar, sometimes using chicken, or lil smokies, shrimp, sometimes I add parmasean cheese, make it a jumbalaya! Making this is just as easy as making fried rice!

In the picture I added shrimp, I cooked the shrimp separately because Mr. P is allergic to shrimp, and I LOVE SEAFOOD. But if you want to add shrimp to the dish I would recommend you add the shrimp in at the last second of garlic and onions, before adding the cut sausage and pasta.

For Mother's Day, I wanted to give my mom and sister something extra special because they deserve it. I went online to look at Edible Arrangements because at least they could eat the bouquet rather than just plain flowers. Then the idea hit. I can make them a strawberry bouquet.

I skewered the washed strawberries to the end of a wooden skewer stick, then dip some of them into melted chocolate then kept it refrigerated until chocolate hardens. Next, I place a ribbon around a tall glass (I used The Old Spaghetti glass). To make the ribbon from falling down, I wrapped a rubberband around the glass first then tie the ribbon by wrapping around the rubberband.Pour in some m&ms, then place the strawberries sticks in there. It looks pretty cool huh? Just the many ideas I have in my head. I dropped it off to my mom's house but she wasn't home. But she said when she opened the door, she smelled the chocolate and the strawberries and knew that I must have stopped by and was really happy to see the bouquet. YAY!