Raiding the pantry

First of all, please let me apologize for the lack of photographs thus far.  They will be added in another entry when I get home.  I went in to work today for a little while, and while I'm waiting for my media to warm, I'm going to write a little :) 

Last night, The Hubs and I needed dinner, but we were making a ton of progress on the house (moving furniture, cleaning, laundry, etc.), so I didn't want to make anything elaborate (nor did I really think I had the ingredients to do so).  Also, we're trying to be good about what we eat.  Having just discovered an amazing little Mexican place in town, as well as our love of take-out Chinese, Vietnamese, and, of course, pizza; this can be a difficult task.  Rather than spending money (calories, fat, sodium, etc.) on delicious, delicious take-out, we raided the pantry.  Now, The Hubs has always found my pantry to be a bit of a curiosity... I can make, at any given time, panckaes, couscous, falafel, pasta, any one of a vast number of baked goods, rice, sushi, etc... but I will still say "I have nothing to make!".  In an effort to fix that, we went to go-to staple #1: Dried pasta.  What to serve with said pasta?  Well, the jar of spaghetti sauce that we had left over from a camping trip had gone the way of the fungus, and so I thought, "butter and garlic?".  Not the worst thought ever, I don't think, but a quick survey of the contents of the NEW REFRIGERATOR (yay yay yay yay yay!) unveiled a nice surprise - a package of Leidy's Andouille sausage.  Living near Hatfield, PA means that there is lots of readily available locally produced pig in any grocery store.  :)  Anyway, I had the water on for the pasta, and decided I'd saute some garlic with the andouille, sliced pretty thin.  I also happened to discover a can of plain tomato sauce (a 32-ouncer), which I decided to heat up (instead of adding oil to the pasta, I'd add some moisture with tomato sauce).  A few leaves of fresh basil torn up, and some of the garlic from the andouille pan made for a nice, light-tasting sauce that complemented the dish quite well.

Everything was finished at almost the exact same time (I don't know if I could do that again if I tried!), and so it was experiment time.  Now, for those of you wondering what Andouille sausage is, it is this: Snausages!  A cajun spiced sausage.  Honestly, I wasn't exactly how that would pair with a more traditional Italian sauce, but let's put it this way: The Hubs loved it, and I'm now convinced that, just like bacon, everything goes with sausage :)  The plates were finished off with a fresh shaving of parmaggiano reggiano, and dinner was consumed in good order.

I think we can claim this raid a victory!