Stroganoff Anyone?

Tonight, I made mushroom stroganoff.

It all started in the grocery store earlier this evening. Alex and I were walking through the "hippie" section of Fred Meyer, when we passed the oh so familiar gluten free quinoa pasta. We had yet to give this pasta a try as we passed, and decided it was high time we remedied that situation.

But what would we make this this pasta? Alex claimed that we had a jar of pasta sauce waiting to be consumed in our cupboards, but having just cleaned out said cupboards last weekend I was fairly certain that he was mistaken. I thought tuna noodle casserole sounded delicious, but it would take an awfully long time to put together once we got home. Stroganoff appealed to our time constraints and our palettes. We did, however, get extra pasta for tuna noodle casserole later on this week.

Alex and I don't necessarily follow recipes, per say. Usually we find something as a guide if we are unsure of temperatures of preparation techniques, but if we know the ingredients we're dealing with, we wing it. We were going to find a packet to prepare our meal from, but when we could not find such a thing in the endless aisles of Fred Meyer, it was time to bring in some tech support for our dinner.

My mother has "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" as her ring back tone. I find this terribly catchy, but resisted the urge to sing in the soup aisle; I want to go back to that Fred Meyer, after all. With the enlisted help of my father, my mom poured through her many cookbooks to find all the recipes for stroganoff and tuna casserole that they had. In the "Campbell's" book, the easy stroganoff recipe called for ground beef, cream of mushroom soup, and salt and pepper to taste. Certainly Alex and I could come up with something better than that (my mom gave of some good ideas too).

1 hole onion chopped
A large pile of sliced button mushrooms
1 can of corn, drained and slightly rinsed
1 can cream of mushroom and garlic soup
at least a cup of sour cream
8oz. Quinoa pasta
Butter for sauteing
Salt to taste
Nature's Seasons to taste

Saute onions until soft, add salt and mushrooms and turn down heat and let soften. Meanwhile cook pasta. Add corn and Nature's Seasons, allow to simmer until pasta is cooked. Drain pasta, put it pack in its pot and pour mushroom mixture on top, add soup and sour cream, mix until soup and sour cream are well blended with the rest of the ingredients and serve.

The quinoa pasta was a serious cut above rice pasta in quality and taste.

Alex added a bit more sour cream to his, but licked his bowl clean (which he never does). He has had a terrible weekend with his external hard drive crashing yesterday, so I'm glad we managed something tasty for him. We cut up a pineapple that i had bought to eat for breakfasts with cottage cheese, and had a few pieces of that as our dessert.

Despite Alex's rough weekend, it was a nice evening. Granted, so was last night, as we were at his parents' house celebrating the birthdays. Alex and his sister were both born in October; their birthdays fall within a few days of one another. I can imagine as children they probably didn't appreciate the concept of a joint birthday, but they certainly do now. We had wonderful fish tacos and I drooled a little over their traditional german chocolate cake. Alex's mother had baked some apples for me to have with the ice cream, and I almost forgot the cake on the table they were so good. I, however, do not have such a strong will that I didn't have a small sliver of cake, too.

The weekend is over, and I am typing from bed, just about ready to get some sleep before the school week starts up again. Oh! I forgot that I also painted a door frame in our apartment today, but that story will have to wait for another time. Hopefully it will be a story that includes pictures, but I wouldn't hold your breath. It appears that promise is one I have a hard time keeping.

I must be tired, I've abandoned my cohesive storyline. Time for me to give the fingers a rest!