Monday Night Cooking & Crafting

Let's start with the cooking.  Reuben's are a favorite of mine, but are tricky for us to enjoy together as gluten free bread just isn't that great (as I've mentioned before).  I have been hooked on Arby's Reuben sandwiches (yes they do corn beef as well as they do roast beef) for about a month now and wanted to find a way to create a dinner we could both enjoy, so I enlisted some Quinoa pasta and made Reuben Pasta last night:

That's the sauerkraut in the purple strainer in the back.  I didn't have a recipe, I mean there probably is a recipe out there in the world of "interwebs" for Reuben Pasta (or something of the like), but this is what I did, no recipe, no measurements, just freestyle!

I got the pasta in salted boiling water, then heated some extra virgin olive oil in a pan.  I sliced the corn beef thinly and separated the strips to brown (and warm up) in the heated oil.  Once warm, I added the sauerkraut (I didn't use my entire can of sauerkraut - it's really one of those things that is "to taste" depending on how much you loooooooooove sauerkraut).  I added about 1/3-1/2 of the bottle of Thousand Island dressing to the corn beef sauerkraut mixture while it was still on the stove just to make sure everything was heated through.  Once the pasta was drained I added it back to the pot with the corn beef mixture and tossed with about 1/2-3/4 cup shredded swiss cheese.

Once plated I did top with additional swiss (cause you can't have too much cheese!).  We also had apple cider with dinner last night.  We're already on our 3rd gallon of the season, at least - it might be my favorite part of fall!

Dinner was yummy (as were the left overs for lunch about 20 min ago).  Not exactly like having a Reuben but YUMMY!  Next time I think I would use a 2nd pack of corn beef, it did get a little lost in all that pasta!


On to the crafting portion of my evening - I made GREAT progress on the Eggplant Infinity version 2.0:

That's not just the pile of frogged yarn, but the entire Vanna's Choice skein - all crocheted last night!  I love  nights like last night with 2 full hours of Dancing with the Stars!  This means 2 full hours of crocheting (it's how Jonathan got a surprise crochet blanket for Christmas last year, I crocheted like a crazy person for 2 hours every Monday while he was in class!)  I will admit that it's not 100% 2 full hours because the dancer in me has to stop crocheting while they dance to focus (and critique) what's going on!  Tonight I need to make sure I have another skein of this yarn in my stash because I'm out of yarn and the scarf is definitely not done!  It needs to be wrapped and with me on Friday morning when I get to work, so I really hope that I don't lose tonight to crochet and have to go to AC Moore tomorrow night after work - I'll definitely be down to the wire!

Oh!  I'm also using Marie Anne's pattern that's proven over and over again to be a favorite of mine!  If I have enough purple in my stash when I get home tonight, I'd love to make the hat to match for this friend of mine - finishing the scarf tonight/tomorrow night is the only way they're will ever be enough time for both before Friday morning!

Let me backtrack quickly before leaving you today (to go back to my day job) - anyone  watching this season of Dancing with the Stars?  What does everyone thing of this season's contestants?  Most improved this week 1?  And do you think Nancy Grace showed more boob that we all signed up for by the end of her routine?