Week 29: From Your Pantry - Chicken Sausage Pasta [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: A pantry is a room or a storage area, separate from the kitchen, in which food is stored. I don't know what kind of billionaire thought of that theme, but most of us aren't rich enough to have an entire other room to store food in. So we're gonna take some liberties and define this week as "cook a dish with food you have lying around your house". Okay? Okay. Screw it, I'm ordering in. You guys have fun. Here's a song for inspiration.

I was somewhat dreading this week because I'm notorious for having a very sparse kitchen.  I found Supercook to be really helpful and will definitely be checking it out in the future.  Luckily I had pasta and sauce laying around since my last Costco run and was glad to have a chance to use it. I was slightly concerned about protein, but luckily found some frozen chicken andouille sausage in my freezer. Note to self: start keeping more protein around the house for spontaneous cooking!

I threw some smashed garlic in a sauce pan with the sliced sausage until it started getting brown and fragrant, then added a jar of marinara. Since I usually like to spice up standard tomato sauce to make it my own, I also added in oregano, thyme, and paprika. And thanks to my mom for giving me the tip of adding red pepper flakes to the boiling pasta water to give it an extra kick!