Sour Cream Noodle Bake

Mike wanted to make more peach muffins, which require sour cream for some reason.  I told him that we didn't have any sour cream (we rarely have any since he hates it).  As it turns out, we already had a container.  Now I had to find a way to get rid of two containers of sour cream, by hiding them in dishes, since Mike won't even touch a dish if he thinks sour cream may have been near it in the refrigerator!

Since Isaac and Rebekka were packing for their move to Louisiana, I thought it would be nice to make them some food.  I found a recipe on the Pioneer Woman's website for Sour Cream Noodle Bake.

Unfortunately I informed Mike that I wanted to make this dish in order to get rid of the sour cream.  He thought I was trying to be be nice and help Isaac and Rebekka.

Even though the recipe said that it served 8, it looked a little small, so I ended up doubling the recipe, since we figured that we'd be feeding 8 people, including 2 teenage boys who would have been hungry from packing and moving furniture.  As it turns out we had just enough sour cream to make 2 batches of the peach muffins and double this recipe.

I didn't have any egg noodles, so I used small shells instead.  I would've used Farfelle, but I needed a pound of noodles, and Mike had used some for his pesto pasta the day before.

The dish itself was average.  The noodles came out a little soft after the pasta had been baked.  I tasted the meat sauce while it was cooking.  It was pretty tasty!

Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce

Mike and I both love the Rosa sauce at Domenic's Italian Restaurant.  It's a tomato cream sauce that we have never been able to reproduce and we've never tasted any other sauce at any other restaurant that rivals that deliciousness.  This doesn't mean I've stopped trying to make this sauce at home.

I had bought a quart of heavy whipping cream to use in some recipe.  Unfortunately I don't remember which recipe I wanted to make this this.  As a result, I started looking at different websites to try to find a use for it.  I found this recipe for Pasta with Tomato Cream Sauce, which looked amazing.

I only made a quarter of the recipe in case I didn't like it.  Plus, even if I did like it, what would I do with a pound and a half of pasta?  However, when I was calculating how much onion to put in, I actually put in the whole amount for the onions, not 1/4 of it.  I thought it seemed like a lot of onion for the amount of oil and butter that was present.  Luckily I realized my mistake before I had added anything else except the garlic.  I then put the onion/garlic mixture in a storage container and started again, this time only putting in 1/4 of the amount of onion identified in the recipe.

This recipe calls for sugar - to taste, salt and pepper - to taste, and Parmesan cheese - to taste.  How am I supposed to know how much of each to put in?

I also didn't have any fresh basil at the time, so I omitted that all together.  At first I didn't put any sugar, salt or pepper in at all.  It came out quite tart.  I then added some sugar, but then the sauce was too sweet (see what happens when a recipe doesn't tell you how much sugar to use?!)  I then added some garlic salt and some cheddar cheese since I had run out of Parmesan cheese.

I plan to make this recipe again, but to note how much of each ingredient I am actually using.