My name is Christina and I'm addicted to basil...Do we need rehab?

Hi Basil, it's me, your girlfriend. I want to cook with you tonight. Come over around 7 okay? Thanks.

Apparently I'm not the only addict. Who am I kidding? All three of us have a problem. Brett's is saved for another post.

Super boyfriend had lots of reading to do, so I whistled for my other boyfriend, Hunley, to come with me to the grocery store. We made it all the way to Publix without him slamming my car into neutral. Success!! Publix isn't a fan of boyfriend #2, so he had to stay in the car while I shopped. Bummer. I came back to a lot of drool all over my car seat.

I was excited to find this chicken sausage that I had read about in Jenny's blog:


I bought those, a can of basil tomatoes, tomato paste, a box of Barilla whole wheat thin spaghetti, and some fresh veggies.

These are great for making home made pasta sauce:

Just like pancakes, I prefer to make my own sauce. I chopped up half an onion, minced 3 big fat cloves of garlic and added them to a pan with olive oil. I then added crushed red pepper and cooked for another minute.

I threw the tomatoes in the blender for a few seconds, then added those and the tomato paste to the pan. Finally, I added more fresh basil. So good!


I let that cook for a bit while I sliced up the sausage, which was also added to the sauce to enhance flavor.

After the spaghetti cooked, I spooned the chicken sausage & tomato sauce over it. We shared a side of broccoli & cauliflower.
The Barilla whole grain pasta was really good--not tough or odd-tasting like other whole grain/whole wheat pastas I've tried. A 1 oz serving is 200 calories, and packs 6g of fiber! It is also a good source of protein (7g), iron, and magnesium.

The Al Fresco chicken sausages were 140 calories per link and 7g of fat -- not bad for sausage! They were pretty tasty, although next time I'd like to try them without tomato sauce so I can really see what they're like.