Recipe: Pesto Pasta with Sausage

I attempted my first (slightly modified) Pinterest recipe tonight: Pesto Pasta with Chicken Sausage & Roasted Brussels Sprouts Green Beans.

Photo via Gimme Some Oven

I was developing the typical cooking blog post in my head while I was preparing my ingredients: Introduce with lovely photograph of what I'm attempting to make (above), list the ingredients and document each step of the recipe with photos and explanations. Well, if you want a photo, this is the only one you're getting:

That's because my cooking attempt was an epic fail. The original recipe can be found here, but I slightly modified it to avoid the Brussels sprouts. (I don't have an oven, and I already had other vegetables I wanted to use it.) I also adjusted some of the ingredient amounts to better suit my tastes:

• 1 tbsp. salt
• 1 lb (16 oz.) small shell pasta
• 4 sausage links, sliced into 1/4″ thick coins
• 4 tsp. minced garlic
• 1 cup almond slivers
  
• cooking spray
• 1 can green beans
• small pat of butter
• 1/3 cup pesto

I still think these ingredients would have worked fine, but it's my cooking that's the problem. I started out well by thinking through what I needed to start when to get all the cooking done at the same time:

1. Begin heating water for pasta.
2. Get ingredients ready.
3. Put pasta and salt in boiling water.
4. Begin cooking sausage. Add garlic.
5. Lightly toast slivered almonds.
6. Heat green beans and butter in microwave.
7. Mix all ingredients to bowl, add pesto.

Good plan, right? Except along the way, I forgot to slice the sausage before I put it in the skillet, then I burned the sausage and made my apartment so smoky I had to open a door and three different windows with the fan on high. Sheesh. Good thing I don't have a smoke alarm. (Or perhaps that's a bad thing, seeing how well I cook.) I also couldn't find anything to put the slivered almonds on in the toaster oven, so I just threw them in with the sausage and garlic. That didn't turn out so bad, except then I not only burned the sausage but also the almonds.

All in all, it's still a passable meal, but not one I'm willing to photograph and put on the Internet. I think it can be described best in my text to my sister, who happened to text me about her pinning obsession right as I finished making the meal:

"I can taste the remnants of a good idea, marred by burnt." 

I'm not going to give up, though! I'll keep looking on Pinterest for new ideas, and hopefully next time I try a recipe I'll be able to share some photos of how well it turned out. :)