Bell Pepper Pesto Rotini Pasta with Chicken Sausage

Yummy Rotini pasta with bell peppers and chicken sausage coated in a pesto sauce. Administered with the ever important bottle of Shiraz
Making a pasta dish in camp, away from the niceties of home, turns out to be far easier than I'd expected.  Here it is, our very first camp-made pasta meal made atop of a wooden Byer Of Maine camp table and a propane-fired Coleman stove.  Now, this one takes two pots, one for preparing the sauce and another for the rotini (of course).  I never would have cleared a two-pot meal in camp before, ("C'mon! Two freaking pots!?") so Brooke must have had me sidetracked with a homemade cookie or something.  Perhaps a near-frozen Dos Equis so thick with ice that it clogged the neck and held my attention for a while.  She worked it.  But this one's so tasty, that I don't mind it one bit that she has to clean an extra pot . . .

Ingredients

• 1 box Bertolli Rotini pasta
• 1 package Knorr Pesto sauce mix
• 1 fresh red bell pepper
• 1 fresh yellow bell pepper
• 2 Archer Farms Sun-Dried Tomato Chicken Sausage thingies
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Directions

1. Get the pasta started by boiling water - you knew that, right?
2. While the rotini cooks, slice the chicken sausage into a bunch of little discs - like mini meat frisbees without the lip.  Or, if you will, like those discs they make in chainsaw competitions
3. Slice both bell peppers as you please
4. In a second pot, and on a second burner, prepare the pesto sauce as indicated on the package (Add 3/4 cup water and the olive oil, bring it all to a boil, keep stirring, simmer for 5 minutes)
5. Add chicked sauasage and bell peppers to pasta a minute or two before it's fully cooked
6. When the pasta's ready, add the pesto and serve it straight out of the pot.

Short Cuts

Tasty red wine with pesto pasta in camp - it's perfect.
To minimize the effort in camp, you can cheat a bit (who's looking?) by doing one or more of the following at home prior to the trip:

• Slice your bell peppers
• Cut the sausage
• Prepare the pesto sauce and use a categorically bomb-proof container for transporting it (skimp, you'll be sorry)
• And if you're really nervous about it, go ahead and cook the pasta at home.  You can re-heat it in a covered pot on the camp stove with a little water (1/4 to 1/2 cup), stiring it frequently.  Seriously, it works.