Baked Rigatoni with Brussels Sprouts, Figs and Blue Cheese {The Food Matters Project}

For my 25th birthday on Saturday, I decided to let myself live as precariously and recklessly as possible before I had to get all old and mature and sow these wild oats I’ve been harboring.

(Ha. Right.)

To be perfectly honest, it all started Friday night when I essentially ate peanut butter and jelly bars for dinner, along with a side of cake batter.  All while full-on knowing that I was slated to run 10 miles the next morning.

It was a throwback to 2009 when I was training for my first marathon and consumed exactly one ice cream sundae and approximately six cocktails the night before a twenty mile run.

(Sigh.  That was my golden year.)

Nine times out of ten, such audacity will land you at mile 5 with a raging stomachache, thankful that you snuck your debit card into your sports bra for emergency cab riding purposes.  But every so often, the birthday gods will shine upon you and, with the cold wind blowing in your hair, you’ll find yourself back at your apartment after ten miles thinking that you totally could have run three point one more.

It happens.

Then there was my trip to Anthropologie.  If you’ve ever been in that store, you know that entering it with a credit card (let alone two) is about as “living-on-the-wild-side” as you can get.

Especially if you’re a food blogger who wants to fill your life and cupboards with as many colorful and mismatching plates as possible.

It took every ounce of self control I could muster not to hand over my Visa to the cashier and say, “Oh yes. I’ll take one of everything, please.”

(And, if we’re being honest…it may never happen again.)

Follow this up with a successful sushi-eating expedition involving both my parents (who are pretty much convinced that raw fish is as dangerous as a controlled substance), my siblings, and my best friends and a delicious triple layer cake with an ungodly amount of butter in it.  I was coasting on a winning streak thirty miles wide.

So of course, Sunday came and I had to take a gamble on this pasta.  With it’s kaleidoscopic combination of ingredients and flavors it was pretty much a hit or miss situation.  That I would have had to eat every night for the next six nights for better or worse.

I said a prayer, clicked my heels together three times and dug in.  To delicious.

While the mix of brussels sprouts, dried figs, blue cheese, and pasta may seem strange at first…it actually somehow all just works, with each component playing off the strengths of the others.  A fabulous end to a birthday weekend, if I do say so myself.

For the recipe, head on over to Twenty by Sixty. I made absolutely no changes to it other than to omit the oil.

For more information about The Food Matters Project and to see how you can join in, click here!

I am submitting this to Presto Pasta Nights, which is being hosted by Ruth of Once Upon A Feast.