Chicken & Sausage Bowties with Balsamic Tomato Basil

• Find some good balsamic vinegar -- not too vinegary. Kirkland brand from Costco comes in a huge bottle, but it's great!
• Dice up an onion, some garlic, and a bunch of tomatoes (if they're expensive, supplement with some drained & rinsed canned tomatoes -- S&W is good, Wal-Mart generic is tasteless -- to find a brand that works well for the price, you may have to buy a few brands and taste em)
• Douse it all in the vinegar, add a pinch of sugar and a bunch of dried basil (if you have fresh basil, add it after you're nearly done cooking everything else)
• Boil some water and start making some bowtie pasta. While it's boiling/cooking....
• Sauté everything in a pan with olive oil for a bit until the tomatoes cook down. If you want a fresher sauce, you can cook onion first, then garlic (don't let it brown up much or it'll get bitter) and then only cook the tomatoes for a bit.
• Depending on how much sauce/meat/pasta you have, you may have too much pasta and chicken and not enough sauce -- if so, just set aside some pasta & meat for lunch the next day. A bit of butter, garlic, Parmesan, maybe some cream, and it's pretty tasty.

Or if you're in the mood for an American Italian dish: cook an onion until translucent. Add garlic, cook carefully so you don't scorch it. Add a 1-2 cans crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic powder, a couple tablespoons butter, and a bit of cream until it turns a slightly orange. You've got a nice tomato-basil cream sauce you can use with pasta, or cover chicken with sauce and mozzarella and bake until cheese is brown.

Get some curry paste from a local Asian food store (supermarkets charge way too much, and it's usually not as good). Add curry paste to chicken, onions, chicken broth (or coconut milk if you're not on a diet!), and vegetables (zucchini, potatoes, bell peppers, etc.) Fish sauce or oyster sauce is a good addition, as well as fresh grated ginger and Thai basil.

If you're in a hurry, browse around for simmering sauces at Trader Joes, or grocery store. Sometimes you can find interesting bottles for like $2-$3, and while they're generally not amazing, it's sometimes just enough to spark your creative side. You can add fresh stuff, like ginger or garlic to Asian-inspired sauces, to liven things up a bit.

You can do similar things with grilled sirloin -- sauté onions and peppers one night to get a cheesecake, add to other vegetables another night and get a stir fry, etc. It's always nice to cook the meat with everything, deglaze to get a good sauce (pour some liquid on the browned bits on the bottom of the pan) . But leftover thinly sliced beef, if it was grilled to a nice medium/medium-rare to begin with, works well as a timesaver.