Weekly Menu and a Recipe: Sausage and Rice

Here I am with another post so soon! I am very sporadic that way. Sometimes life gets ahead of me and I do not post for a month, other times I'm firmly entrenched in our routine and I can spare a few minutes for blogging. C'est la vie, as they say. Isn't it marvelous?

I am back to my weekly menu plan after a brief hiatus. While the kids were with their dad over Christmas, I did not make a menu plan, and then, naturally, it took a few weeks to get back into the habit. Do you ever feel like a break is more of a nuisance than a blessing? Perhaps it is just that they were gone for a whole week. An afternoon break would have been nice, a week....well. Let's just say I keep myself plenty busy while they are away.

Again, I don't actually know what dish I will make when. Mostly it depends on how long the ingredients will stay fresh. I always have all three kids in tow, and so I do one trip to the farmer's market, and one trip to the grocery store, and that is it. If anything is forgotten, it's just too damn bad. You can tell by the expletive how firmly I adhere to this motto.

Sausage with Rice and Vegetables (recipe below)
Chicken and Rice, arugula and spinach salad with sliced radishes and feta cheese.
Roast Chicken,  roasted brussels sprouts with herbs de Provence
Baked Ziti with Kale (will post this recipe soon, as it's a good one!)
Broiled salmon, sauteed broccoli with almonds
Braised turnip greens with potatoes, carrots, and turnips (I used my own Briased Kale recipe, but substituted turnips greens for the kale, onion for the leek, and beef stock for the chicken stock, plus added smoked bacon and turnips. It was a hit)

Recipe: Sausage with Rice and Vegetables
This was originally my mother-in-law's recipe, and it's a good one, although I've changed it a lot from her original. Cheap, easy, quick, and flexible. I love recipes where you can really play around with the ingredients. I have found that this recipe is a fantastic vehicle for getting vegetables into my kids' tummies. I have often cleaned out the vegetable crisper with this recipe, as it is very forgiving if the ingredients aren't exactly picked the same day. Some of my additions at various times have included frozen mixed vegetables, carrots, mushrooms, eggplant, zucchini, parsnips, peas, and corn and it's always good. My kids love sausage, and it's cheap and easy to find good pastured sausage (even I can find it at my very small local farmer's market), but you could do it entirely without meat if you wanted to. For the sake of simplicity, I'm giving you basic recipe, and you can add whatever vegetables you want, but you'll need to use your own judgment about when to add them. Just remember that harder vegetables probably need to be added with the celery and onion so they have time to cook, while softer vegetables, like mushroom or peas, really just need to be heated up and can be added towards the end.

3 ribs celery, diced
1 small onion (use your favorite kind or whatever you have on hand: red, yellow, white, or even green onions), peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (or to taste)
1 pound breakfast sausage (I use mild)
1 cup uncooked long grain brown or white rice
2 eggs
your favorite vegetables, diced, or 1 bag frozen mixed vegetables (harder vegetables, like carrots, need to be diced small so they will cook faster)
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil, several turns of the pan

Cook rice separately, according to package directions.  In a large dutch oven, cook the sausage over medium heat until done. Remove from pan with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add celery and onion to the dutch oven and saute until caramelized, about 8-10 minutes. Add the garlic, and saute until fragrant, about 30 seconds.  Add the sausage, cooked rice, (frozen vegetables) and Worcestershire sauce and stir well. When mixture is thoroughly heated, break eggs into the dish and stir to break up and mix well. Cook until egg is done and no longer runny. Salt and pepper to taste.