Two out of Three Ain't Bad

I still miss All My Children, and out of sheer force of a 30-year habit, I come in each day during my lunch hour and turn the television to ABC.  The Chew is what greets me now.  And it's not that I dislike The Chew, but it just seems wrong that it took the place of my soap opera.  This past Friday as I watched  Michael Symon  cooking, I thought it might be good to try the dish he prepared called "Orecchiette with Sausage and Swiss Chard".

Barry and I bought groceries on Friday night, and nowhere at Kroger could we find Orecchiette.  By the way, Orecchiette is shaped like a tiny ear, and it gets its name from the Italian word "orecchio" meaning ear.  I knew I needed a pasta similar to the orecchiette to hold the light sauce in the recipe, so I studied all of the pastas on the aisle.  The one I came up with was "Campanelle" pasta, and each piece of pasta was shaped like a little bouquet of flowers.  It wasn't even close to the orecchiette, but it was cute pasta.  That counts, right?

And I blame this on living in a small town, but we often can't find ingredients that stores in larger cities might carry.  I guess I could have driven to Memphis for the Swiss Chard, but it wasn't worth it to me for this one ingredient.  I stood in front of the various greens in the produce section, and they offered mustard, turnip and collard, but no chard.  I finally decided that fresh spinach would substitute nicely for the chard, and the flavor would be fairly mild with its addition to the dish.

So last night, I put all of the ingredients together, and it made a lovely, lemony pasta dish with Italian sausage and spinach.  Barry and I liked it well enough to make it again, but Traci didn't care for it much.  Although I really enjoy trying new dishes, it's great when I hit a homerun with one.  This one wasn't quite a homer since Traci didn't like it, but I'll try again.  Two liking it out of three ain't bad!