Pasta pour dejeuner!

It's the third week of school coming up, so I decided to make a hot lunch instead of last week's salads and the wraps from the week before. We have access to microwaves at school, so I can heat it up there. I decided to go with pasta. I usually tend to make my pasta sauce from scratch if I have the time, and I usually go along with this same combination of ingredients. This is the first time I added sun-dried tomatoes - they gave the sauce another layer of tomato flavor, I loved it! Here's another short video I made from the cooking process:

Ingredients: 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, 2 small red onions, half a head of garlic, 2 jalapeños (with or without seeds), 3 small carrots, 1 package of baby portabello mushrooms, package of sweet italian turkey sausage (removed from casing), sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, dried basil & oregano, crushed red pepper flakes, salt & pepper, whatever pasta you like

1. Chop all vegetables to around roughly the same size (to your liking).
2. Place garlic, onion, carrots and jalapeños in pan and sauté with olive oil on medium high heat. Add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes as well, to your taste.
3. When onions are translucent, add the mushrooms to the pan. Season here as well with salt & pepper.
4. After the mushrooms are softened, add the turkey sausage and sun-dried tomato to the pan and break it up into tiny pieces with your spatula.
5. Brown most of the sausage (it doesn't need to be cooked all the way) and finally add the can of crushed tomatoes to the pan with some dried basil and oregano. Obviously fresh herbs would work better if you have them. 1 tbsp fresh herbs = 1 tsp dried herbs.
6. Lower heat to keep the sauce at a simmer. Let it cook until the water evaporates and it starts to thicken up to your desired consistency.
7. When the sauce is done, mix with al dente cooked pasta (in the pan, so the residual heat aids in the pasta absorbing the sauce) and enjoy!

This sauce is usually my go-to, but the ingredients vary each time, depending on what is in the fridge/pantry. I'm excited to bring this to school for lunch - it's a nice change from salad.

I've also been making a lot of smoothies lately to have as breakfast during my commute to school. This one had honeydew melon, avocado and vanilla greek yogurt. It made such a pretty green color!

-J