When Monday needed a pick-me-up…

We’re still making our way through the red wine and garlic sausage in our freezer — formed into links with our very own hands — after taking the Sausage Making 101 class last summer at Avedano’s Meats in San Francisco.

Dressed up and bound for the oven

We paired the sausage with ricotta cheese, crimini mushrooms, sautéed sweet peppers and kale and spooned an herb dressing on top made with olive oil, chives, parsley, lemon zest, and crushed red pepper. Darn it was tasty, especially with a side of roasted carrots dressed with lemon.

We keep attempting to recreate some of the dishes we had in Italy — like the cannelini beans in rosemary broth and lemony roasted carrots. So far, our concoctions are nowhere in the ball park of those Italian dishes, but we’ll keep trying.

When Nick makes pizza dough, it’s always enough so that we have several rounds in the freezer at once, which makes it super easy to defrost one and assemble a spur-of-the-moment, top-with-your-heart’s-delight, pizza any given night.