I had some time today while waiting for another store to open and decided to browse Whole Foods. While thus engaged with my browsing I came across the pasta isle and decided I should try a new dish for dinner tonight. I picked out a pasta, rigatoni, since we have never used this before and then called the master recipe finder, my awesome husband. He found a recipe, Baked Rigatoni with Italian Sausage and this vegetable:



Have you cooked with this? This is fennel, our new favorite, fun vegetable. I started cutting into it and it smells so yummy, like black licorice candy. I've heard of fennel before, but have not experienced it. I also picked up some fresh sausage from the butcher, fresh basil and a pomegranate for my hubby(the latter wasn't going into our rigatoni dish). At the dinner table all I heard was "yum", "mmmmmmmm", "can I have some more?" and "I ate these things without the pasta or sausage!" (this was the fennel and other veggies). I feel like I have finally succeeded in getting all of my kids to eat the same dish! We would have paid money for this dish at Olive Garden or Macaroni Grill it was that good. If you too want to have a great experience with food, you can click here to get the recipe. The 2 things I changed was I bought mild sausage instead of spicy as I knew my kids wouldn't eat it if it had a kick and if you want to make it a little lower in fat, leave out the mozzarella. I did and it was still delicious!

Happy eating.