Pasta is an Italian food made from a dough using flour, water and/or eggs. The dough is shaped and can be stored. Pasta is boiled prior to consumption. There are many variations of shapes and ingredients that are all called pasta. A few examples include spaghetti (solid cylinders), macaroni (tubes or hollow cylinders), fusilli (swirls), and lasagna (sheets). Pasta can also denote dishes in which pasta products are the primary ingredient, served with sauce or seasonings. The word comes from Italian pasta which shares its origins with "paste", meaning "dough", "pasta", or "pastry" as in "small cake".

Sausage is delicious and versatile! There are many things one can do with sausage as a main dish, or as a compliment to another featured item in a main course meal. Hot or sweet sausage goes great with pasta in a meat sauce, breakfast sausage is awesome with eggs or pancakes, and chorizo is fantastic with pasta and pesto.

great dinner recipe, crab dip appetizer and a tomato pesto pasta. Not to mention a great wine to top it off.

"I will never use garlic!" declares the Sicilian chef as he demonstrates how to make a flavorful pasta dish — octopus linguine with orange juice and almond pesto — without the ingredient he hates. "Garlic is the king of the kitchen," says Antonello Colonna, another prominent Italian chef.

A sauce for pasta or meat, can be used as an ingredient in a variety of dishes. The classic use is to spread the pesto onto slices of bread which are then toasted. The ingredients are: basil, garlic, salt, pine nuts, olive oil, and parmesan cheese (Parmigiano Reggiano). [Leave the cheese out to make it vegan, also, you can substitute walnuts.]

Lovers of pesto, the tangy green pasta sauce, are bracing for increased prices or even shortages after unseasonable hailstorms in northern Italy destroyed much of the most prized variety of basil, the key ingredient in the Genoese specialty.