I found myself thinking about time this morning. Time is such an important part of my life, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.
What does time do? It escapes us; we waste it; it goes by too fast; it can’t go by fast enough; we use it wisely. I typically feel all of these different ways about time in one day. When I walked into school at 7:30am, I thought, “I can’t wait until Friday.” During my hour-long prep, I wrote a to-do list for myself and “used my time wisely.” After work today, I had just a little bit of time to get home, let the dogs out, and get to BodyPump by 5:00pm. Because it is Moose’s birthday, another concept involving time, I wanted to get him and Frankie to the dog park tonight as well before “time escapes” us and it got too dark.
On the weekends, though, I am more relaxed with time. I often do not set an alarm, obviously have no bells ringing at certain times of the day, and don’t worry as much about being productive every minute.
Even when I am less stressed, I still get stuff done. On Sunday, I made it to the dog park, picked up some groceries, and cooked Brody and I breakfast…all before 10:00am.
French toast and coffee for me and an omelet and Dt. Mountain Dew for Brody.
I must’ve had one too many cups of coffee because I set off on a cleaning rampage, and much to Brody’s protests, he became a part of it. We also ran to Endurance House (I needed GU and GU Brew) and Home Depot for my vegetable beds. See…productivity without time constraints. And don’t worry – we also relaxed by watching That 70’s Show and I read fifty pages of Fahrenheit 451.
Honestly, I haven’t drawn any conclusions about time. It just popped into my head this morning, and after pondering it for the day, I realized how important and controlling it is to my life but how differently I treat it on the weekends versus the weekdays.
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Last week at Trader Joe’s, I picked up a carton of two fennel bulbs specifically for this Emeril Lagassi recipe. Years ago, I was looking for a recipe I thought Brody would like. I stumbled across this gem and have since made it at least ten times.
Through trial and error, I have perfected the recipe and can basically make it without the recipe. If you choose to make it, which I highly suggest you do, consider these suggestions:
-Cut the fennel into small pieces or thin slices (they take a while to soften)
-Cook the sausage and fennel at the same time
-When making the Mornay sauce, heat up the milk first before adding it to the roux
-Take the pasta out earlier than you normally would
-Serve with baguette to sop up the remaining sauce
If you wanted to make this a little healthier, you could use turkey sausage; I think Jennie-O makes a hot Italian turkey sausage. You could also add spinach to it for a nutritional kick with little to no change in flavor. Lastly, whole wheat pasta would up the fiber. However, I really make this dish for Brody because he loves it so much, and I would hate it taint his memory of it by changing it this late in the game.
I hope you all had a great Monday!
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