Since we had a “hankering” to have spaghetti last night for supper, I went to my pantry and freezer and got out the ingredients for the sauce. Now, I have to tell you, I keep these kinds of things handy at all times because they add so much to our meals. For instance, I always have several kinds of canned tomatoes on hand, some canned spaghetti sauce, various kinds of pasta…you get the picture. It’s so easy to whip up a good meal when you keep some things on the shelf all the time.

I had smoked sausage in the freezer as well as a container of chopped tomatoes. These were the remainder of a can I’d opened for another recipe awhile back. I also had bell pepper in the freezer. Keeping things like this prepared and at the ready are important so you don’t have to go running out to the store just to prepare a meal.

I cut the smoked sausage up in large pieces, as well as the onions. The bell pepper was already cut into nice sized slices. I added olive oil to my skillet and put the sausage, shiitake mushrooms, and veggies in it, sweating the whole thing until the onions began to turn translucent. I then added a tablespoon of chopped garlic and a tablespoon of Gray Poupon Coarse Ground Mustard. Then, I added in the tomatoes and commercial tomato sauce plus 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and a generous round of freshly ground pepper. I didn’t add other traditional seasonings because of the strong flavors that were already in the sauce.

I let the sauce simmer about 30 minutes. By the time it was done, I was famished just from smelling it cook!

Here’s how it looked after I plated it up. Can’t you just taste the smoked sausage and tomatoes now? Before you pack your luggage sets to come visit and get a plateful for yourself, you should know that we nearly finished it all off in one sitting! We sprinkled shredded Parmesan cheese on it and had cottage cheese as a side accompaniment.

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