Yum......Tortellini with Sausage and Veggies

So, now that I have been married for three weeks it is time to bring out the traditional wife duties of cooking things other than fish sticks and macaroni and cheese. Which I quickly learned was not going to suffice for our (*HIS) dietary needs...

But in all seriousness, cooking all of the meals we eat has been a huge challenge. I used to cook every day when I was in school, but after moving back home with my parents for a year I honestly think my brain was zapped of any recipes, creative food ideas or desire to cook.

I decided to try one new recipe a week which I will post here, and of course double it so that we can eat it every.single.day. This works out great when you like it, but it really hurts your pride and your stomach when you are forced to eat something every day that you hate. For instance,  my first attempt at this flavorless ground turkey/rice junk that smacked me in the face every day I opened my tupperware for lunch and took a whiff. I could hear it whispering to me "oooooooooh my delicious flavor of cardboard and old paper awaits you!!!! Some wife you are...."

Anyway, after that failure that Andrew insists he "really liked" I decided I needed to search very hard for some recipes. So off to Pinterest I went.

I found a recipe on a blog somewhere, but of course I did not print it out so I arrived at the grocery store ready to pick out my mystery ingredients. Here is what we bought:

2 packages of frozen tortellini (we bought the safeway selects 5 cheese brand and it was REALLY good)
1 bottle of zesty italian dressing
2 red peppers
1 package of smoked sausage
1 frozen bag of edamame

It really is as simple as cooking all of the above and combining it. The edamame was a chore because I was supposed to buy a bag of shelled edamame but of course I did not do that. I bought the cook-in-bag edamame in the shell. So I microwaved the bag, burned my fingers peeling all of the beans out (reminds me of my glue gun days...) but was delighted to see my barely 3/4 cup full of beans for $3.99. Anyway, buy a bag of frozen shelled edamame if you can.

So after cooking everything above, I put it all together and put in about half of the bottle of Italian dressing.  The edamame don't have much flavor but they add a lot to the pasta with the color, texture and then knowing how healthy they are.(Also please note that some of Andrew's Alaska themed dinner ware HAS made its way into our apartment. I REPEAT, HAS made its way into our apartment.....sigh)

We loved this a lot and will definitely make it again.  It keeps really well for lunches and dinners later on in the week. Just throw a little extra dressing in whatever container you use to bring it to lunch and when you heat it up it wont dry out at all.