Roasted tomato and Italian sausage Pasta

In response to someone asking "Yum, will you share the recipe," here it is in all its made-up glory.

Cut a few cups of cherry tomatoes in half. Or, cut regular tomatoes into half-cherry tomato size pieces. Place in oven-proof dish. It could be a 9x13 or just use your all-stainless steel cooking pot like I did! Drizzle, nay POUR, a generous amount of olive oil over. The oil should at least coat the bottom of the pan. Season with Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. Roast in 400 degree oven for 30 min. Longer is acceptable too, I think. So is a lower temperature. In any event, the tomatoes should look "shriveled."

While your pasta is boiling, add sweet Italian sausage to the pot of roasted tomatoes. I like chicken A La Fresco brand. (They also make a fabulous chicken apple sausage.) Also add some diced onions (1/4 on onion). Garlic too if you want (but I didn't). Add more olive oil if it looks like it won't properly cover the pasta as if it was a sauce. Cook on med-low until onions are soft and sausage heated through. Throw in some fresh basil for color if you've got it.

Add your pasta to the tomato mixture and stir until well coated with the delicious olive oil. Serve with parmesan if desired. Enjoy!

Laird Park with Schuilings and Dimelers

About two months we went camping with our some of our best comrades: Keith, Nellie and Charlie; and Jason, Liz and Hazel. Laird Park, just north of Potlatch, comes highly reccommended. Not too big of a campground, is next to a river with beach for swimming, is cheap and even has a cool may-pole thingy where you grab onto metal handles dangling from chains and swing yourself around. (Sort of like tether ball, if you were the tether ball.) We had a lovely spot next to the river which lulled the kiddos to sleep (all night!) and provided a back-up refrigerator.

Keith, Jason and Mark smoked pipes and offered intelligent comments on the world's problems.


Liz made us delicious tacos for dinner which for some reason I don't have a picture of, and Hazel went mostly without clothes to stay cool.

Charlie got tuckered.


And Mark put grapes in his eyes (?)


Liz, I think it was your pink sleeping bag that did this to him.

Yes Indeedy I Have Been Remiss...

...but I have a colossal excuse. We had no internet for the summer. That's right, no internet. Our Turkish neighbor went home, that is, to Turkey for the summer and we share internet with him, wireless internet that comes out of his modem and says you have been sucessfully connected to MK Cafe and your signal is "very good." Thus we had no internet for the summer. Forgive me now?

Now it is time to consult our camera (thank you again, Mom and Dad Rodman) to tell us what we did this summer.

Looks like we went to the Oregon Coast in June to teach Family Camp music for Reformation Covenant Church. Pastor Steve Wilkins taught on the family and marriage in a distinctive southern accent. It was fabulous. In fact, almost as good as the music my hubby taught.


We were really there!


So was Mount Hood.


And some bright green moss.

The Stuff Dreams Are Made On

According to Mark, when I'm having a nightmare, I start breathing deeply and very erratically. He knows then to wake me up and relieve me of my chasing monsters.

Well early this morning, Mark detected the scared-person breathing pattern and kindly woke me with a "Corinne, you're having a bad dream."

The thing is, I WASN'T having a nightmare. I dreamed that I was in a kitchen store and I was looking at some beautiful cherry wood cutting boards the size of small card tables. Apparently they were pretty exciting.

Happy Done Day!

Mark is finished with the first year of his conducting master's!

If you think that now he's slacking off, let me fix that. He's writing his master's thesis over the summer on the harmonized settings of Genevan psalms published in England after the exile of the persecuted Calvinists (1560-1620).

To celebrate Done Day, I made a special dinner of mushroom-Swiss burgers, strawberry spinach salad and Texas sheet cake. Mark loves cake, almost as much as tracking down obscure hymnals and transcribing their Genevan settings into modern notion!

Mark has worked incessantly on his studies and still managed to lead our marriage by the still waters this year. He scored straight As on his voice juries (just like last term!) and has earned equally high marks on his papers. I'm so proud of you Mark - Thank You!

Dragged Through the Garden

After reading about our fun little picnic, I'm sure you're all anxious to stampede the grocery and squeeze in a little outdoor dining yourself. Let me introduce you to the ways of the aforementioned Chicago-Style Hot Dog.

1. BUN: IF you are fortunate to have poppy seed hot dog buns and IF they are not astronomically expensive and IF you have a bun steamer then that's what you would do. If not, get the whole wheat or white enriched jobbies and toast them briefly under the broiler (guess which one I do).

2. HOT DOG: find the best quality all-beef hot dog you can. I usually reach for Hebrew National or Nathan's. An authenticity expert will tell you the hot dog should be in a natural casing (i.e. pork intestine) and should "snap" when you bite into it. We don't have those kinds of hot dogs in Idaho. Cut an half-inch x into the end of each dog and fry in a pan until cooked through and deliciously browned. The x is for decoration and Mark invented it. (Authenticity requires steaming or boiling the dog. You decide.)

3. REQUIRED CONDIMENTS:

~Dill Pickle Spear

~Tomato Wedges

~Celery Salt (light sprinkling): you must NOT skip this. It is not a Chicago Dog without it. Buy it cheaply in bulk and place in a salt shaker for ease of use.

~Sweet Relish: the neon green kind if you can find it.

~Yellow Mustard: please note that ketchup is not listed here. That's intentional. It ruins the delicate balance of flavors.

~Diced Onion: in my stomach's humble opinion, optional.

~Pickled Sport Peppers: also optional in my mind, since the entire western half of the U.S. doesn't carry them. Mark occasionally substitutes little hot peppers, which have basically the same effect: adding a little heat. I'll pass, thanks.

Assemble as best you can, open wide, and enjoy!

First Picnic of the Year

On April 4th we had our first picnic of 2009 up by the Jewett Observatory next to a healthy juniper bush.


We keep our picnic equipment, the old MSU blanket and our bright blue cooler box, at the ready for such purposes.


What the observatory looks like inside:


From our observation location, you can see most of the Washington State University Campus.


Including the Ensminger Pavillion, where we had our wedding reception.


We had Chicago-Style Hot Dogs, Pea Salad, Cheetos from a can, Mandarin Oranges and Root Beer.




I like Chicago Dogs.


Mark likes them more.