Sauage Stuffing

We've created many, many sausages over the last two weeks. Those collagen casings are pretty cool. Very easy to work with, as are the Kitchen Aid grinding/stuffing attachments. Ironically, after all my lusty sausage talk from a previous post, I have no appetite for them. I've eaten half of one. I'm blaming it on the pregnancy and my overall aversion to digesting meat other than a few bites of chicken breast once or twice a week.
Fortunately, G and the kids love the sausages and have eaten plenty of them.

It's hard for me to get the herbs right. I haven't really liked any of the blends we've either tweaked ourselves or found from recipes. I like sage, but a little goes a long way, and too much just makes me nauseous. I'll keep working on it, and what I don't eat, I'm sure G and the kids will. And at worst, we're surrounded by neighboring dogs who would probably love to eat good quality sausage!

Yesterday I tooled around with yard measurements and graph paper to map out the vegetable gardens. As usual, my heart pounded with the realization that there are a LOT of things we like to grow and eat and just WHERE will we find the room?!
Well, this year we plan on using the front yard as well as the back. My husband is fairly pessimistic (perhaps realistic), that in our town, which is a fair mix of stable residents and transient students, a front vegetable garden will be vandalized. I however, tend to be optimistic with loads of faith in humanity. I'm hoping that no one will trash it, but they can certainly take from it if they plan to eat what they take. Who knows? There are various community garden plots around town in fairly public places that aren't messed with. And G was certain that the one year we bought a community garden plot, it would be trashed. However, it never was.

And heck, even in our fairly private back yard, we've had people jump the back fence to steal tomatoes from us. Fine by me. I'd prefer it if they asked, but so it goes.

I'm really struggling with whether or not I should take the plunge and buy that small hoop house to extend our growing season. I don't really have the extra money for it now, but the thought of having greens a lot longer than usual sounds absolutely dreamy. And to start stuff earlier! Luxury!

There are other things I want and need. We need to buy the supplies for the chicken roosts and the chicken run. We need to buy a huge length of rope so that our hops can grow as tall as they would like to. We need to buy dirt and good compost for the front yard beds. I want a lovely, cedar archway for the front yard. Sigh. All in good time. I saw them at Downtown Home and Garden and they cost around $375. I told G he could make us one out of cheap pine, or better yet, some crazy pieces from Reuse Recycle, but he's not that type of guy. If he builds something, he has to use the best materials, which I technically appreciate, it's just that I'm such a freakin' tightwad at heart.

All in good time.

Such a Find!

Look! The parsnips I let over-winter in the garden are fine! And more importantly, I found them! Woo hoo! It's like Christmas, I tell ya. I wasn't sure I'd be able to find them, but they were just starting to re-sprout in the warmer weather under their blanket of autumn leaves. They turned out quite nice. Granted, out of a whole packet of seeds, I harvested 10 parsnips, but I can say other than letting them germinate in the beginning for 3 1/2 weeks, these were no-fuss veggies. And I love parsnips. A very honest vegetable. I prefer root vegetables over more exotic veggies any day. They have a far more humble personality.

And in other good news, our freakish collagen sausage casings arrived via UPS! Maybe next weekend I can get around to making links. More posts and pics to come!

Sausage Making

Some people want to travel all the continents or climb Mt. Everest before they die. Me, I've always wanted to make my own sausage. I love the stuff. Coming from generations of Polish Detroiters, I believe my love for sausage is just in my blood. Even when I was a vegetarian for 7 years (through two pregnancies even), I craved sausage(I ate soy sausage during those years but it just doesn't compare). Breakfast links, kielbasa, knackwurst, any kind of brats, loose sausage... it's all good. Being fairly health conscious, one feels a little guilty for eating the stuff too often. Sausage is full of saturated fat and if store bought, full of freakish, unpronounceable chemicals and fillers.

We've been borrowing Alton Brown's Good Eats dvds from the library lately. He's one of my favorites from Food Network. We watched an entire episode about sausage making. That was it!
Friday I finally broke down and bought the food grinder attachment for the mixer. Saturday I found the sausage stuffing tips attachment. We bought an enormous pork shoulder. We needed fatback, but the butcher at the store didn't have any, so we bought the fattiest bacon we could find to use in its place. Since we didn't have any casings on hand, we made breakfast sausage patties. If you look at the picture above, you can see that my husband made the first three the size of hamburgers. I finished making the rest into more normal breakfast patty size.
In the ingredients we included sage, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper, and red pepper. We finished up with 2 1/2 pounds of meat. I froze 8 patties and the rest we cooked last night. Very tasty with a good mouth feel. If you know me at all, you know that I get freaked out by funny mouth textures (part of which is why I didn't eat meat for so long). Strange, unexpected lumps and bumps and grissely bits will stop me dead in my tracks. Ack. Grinding your own meat, with your own ingredients, lends a very safe feeling to eating if you're like me and get obsessive about mouth feel.
The good news is that kids loved it too. I felt like the sage was a bit strong, but obviously, there's so much room for tweaking seasonings. There will be no stopping us now! We've got lamb, chicken, pork and turkey in the freezer. Once summer comes and we have fresh herbs again-- yikes! Just think of the tasty savory herbed sausage we can make!Yum!
I ordered collagen casings last night on sausagemaker.com.
Strange stuff, but much nicer to work with them real casings that are really difficult and spoil within a day or two. When those arrive, we can embark on making savory dinner sausages and breakfast links.
I'm sure more pictures will follow when we commence stuffing!

In other news, I received my seed order from Fedco yesterday and am so excited just to file through them, reading their lovely names and imagining how they will grow! It's the little things in life, right? Collagen casings and seed packets...ah, what a nice weekend.

News Article

I found this today while checking my email. An ABC News story titled:
Year-Round Farmer's Market Encourage Shoppers to Eat Local.

Nice to see.

Back in the Kitchen

Preparing to chop up summertime Yarrow for post partum herbal baths.

I think the Black cloud of Nausea might be slowly dissipating. What was once a very chronic feeling of fighting the urge to park myself in front of the toilet on hands and knees 24/7 has lightened up to a light-weight car sickness. Not bad.
Ironically, I've realized that when I stay up all night at a birth, I don't feel sick at all. Apparently, it's only when I'm well rested that my stomach turns on me.

It was a busy week of home visits, a couple of births (one short and one 2 days)and postpartum visits. I can't tell you when I saw my kids this week or what I said to them. Last night I crashed at 7:30pm after going out for Indian. I slept until 7am am! How lovely.

After taking S to school, I went to the store and bought lots of bulk things to make our own granola again. Since being nauseous, I pretty much stopped making a lot of our food, unless it consisted of scrambled eggs and toast. I can't even think of how much money I wasted on eating out to avoid being sick during the cooking process. Much better if somehow the food just appeared in front of me.

So today was catch up on our lives day. I've sterilized my instruments (this morning someone was in early labor), made yogurt, made granola, oh, and scrambled eggs and toast. Tomorrow, if I am home, I will get back to making our bread again. Fortunately, we have loads of great options around us with Ypsi Co-op Bakery just down the street and lots of local restaurants that make really good food real food.

All this goodness will have a serious dent put in it today, as later this afternoon I have to pick up all the Girl Scout cookies S sold. Organize, distribute, and eat.