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.

Blanket Update: It's Finished!

Do you remember me telling you about Pumpkin's blanket waaaaaayyyyy back when? After his birthday passed and it wasn't finished, I set it aside to start some other small projects that needed to get done, and well, kind of forgot. I saw it folded up last week and thought that there really was not much left to do, probably two more hours and it would be finished. Seven hours later, I wove in the last end. I way underestimated how long it would take me to make that cableknit border! I'm pleased with the way that it turned out. I hope that it will be a special blanket for him. It really is cute, but even more than that, it's the reason I learned to knit. It's been a very emotional project for me, and while I know that Pumpkin will not understand until he's much older, one day, if I can remember, I hope to tell him this:

Dear One,

Here is a blanket that I made with just you in mind. I hope it will keep you warm when you are cold, comfort you when you are sad, and protect you when you are scared. I left the mistakes to remind you that life, like this blanket, is imperfect. Sometimes we mess up, but if you can just keep going, you will make something really wonderful in the end.

I love you,
Mommy 

Library List: 1/16-1/22

Since we've settled into our new house, we've also settled into our new library. Our weekly visits have returned. Our library has an excellent story time and a pretty darn good children's department. Much better than I would have expected. Here is our book list for this week:

The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson
The Cow That Went Oink by Bernard Most
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin
Curious George Learns the Alphabet by H. A. Rey
When Pigasso Met Mootisse by Nina Laden
The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

Our weekly theme is "cows" this week. The Curious George title was an impulse. I have been incorporating more alphabet books into our reading because Darling is obsessed with letters all of a sudden. You should see her pouring over Chicka, Chicka, Boom, Boom! We love Curious George and when I saw it sitting on the shelf, I snatched it up for them. The Snowy Day was also an impulse, since it snowed. The girls had a wonderful time listening to the snow crunch! crunch! crunch! under their feet, just like Peter.

Winter Walk

The snow is almost gone now. Only a few patches are hanging on in shady spots, although they are more ice than snow now from thawing and re-freezing so many times. We enjoyed it while it lasted, though! A few days ago my mom stayed with Pumpkin while he napped so the girls and I could take a long walk through the snow. We tried to identify different animal tracks in the snow (I think we saw deer tracks!) and we tried to make different tracks ourselves. We walked to a creek not too terribly far from our house, and the girls were delighted to find that parts of it were frozen over.

Darling made what she called a "ginormous" snowball and carried it around until her mittens were wet and her hands were freezing cold. Then, of course, she whined that her hands were cold and asked me if I would please carry it! Haha!

One of the neighborhood snowmen. I love the hat!

 Our "Snow Totoro". We had just finished watching My Neighbor Totoro.

I just like this picture for some reason. The bare branches against the icy blue sky. It makes me think of winter, even more than snow

Snow!

Ahhh, a new year! What is it about the start of a new year that makes me want to make resolutions? There's something about starting over which is very appealing. We've had something very big happen here, just nine days into the new year: SNOW!

Real, actual, soft, white, beautiful snow. This is something that rarely happens in our region. We do get some cold temperatures, but usually any winter precipitation comes our way in the form of ice, not snow. If we do get any snow flurries, almost always it's less than an inch and is completely melted within a day or so. This time, we got close to 6 inches! Woot! You can't imagine how excited my children are...or maybe you can! As soon as the first flurries started to fly, Darling had to rush outside to catch some one her tongue:

I definitely see snowmen in my future. I will have to take some  pictures to post. I love winter. We have a fire burning brightly in the grate almost every day.

The kids have brightly colored hats, scarves, and coats, so cute! Doodlebug and Pumpkin were certainly mesmerized by the snowfall:

It's going to be tough to get through our morning chores today, with snow calling our names! I'm sure all the neighborhood kids will be out. The funny thing about snow in a region that is not used to it, is that the whole area shuts down. There's a run on bread and milk at the grocery store, stores and schools close, and people tend to freak out even over an inch of snow. Did anyone else get any lovely white stuff?

How I Make Home-Made Stock

Have you ever made home-made stock, either beef, chicken, or vegetable? It's so much more flavorful than the store-bought kind, but to be honest, I used to think it would be too much trouble to make. Every celebrity chef has their own recipe for chicken stock, but I always find it so wasteful. They often want you to use the whole chicken (or two, or three!)  and then just throw it away once you have strained the liquid. This offends my sensibilities. Waste a whole chicken???? What are they thinking? Likewise with the vegetables. Veggies are relatively inexpensive (only compared to meat and dairy, though), but I still find it bothersome to have to buy vegetables just to make stock.

At last I found a kindred in The Unplugged Kitchen, by Viana La Place. She suggests saving all your kitchen scraps: onion and garlic peels, vegetable peelings, tops, and stems, cheese rinds, and even bread crusts and making soup every week. Then, one of my friends wrote on her blog about saving vegetables scraps in the freezer and making vegetable stock with them. So I decided to try it. Voila! Luscious, dark, flavorful broth, made for free, out of the stuff you usually throw away. And it's super easy to do.

All week long, I save my vegetable scraps, and I mean, everything. Tops, peelings, and root ends of carrots, turnips, eggplants, sweet peppers (though not the seeds or core), celery, okra, potatoes, sweet potatoes, stems of herbs, the tiny little garlic cloves that are too small to use, you name it, I save it. Because I'm using the scraps instead of throwing them out, I make sure to do an extra-thorough wash and rinse of everything before I use it. I put trimmings in baggies and store them in the freezer. We eat a lot of veggies in this house, so I end up with a lot of scraps. One day a week, I roast a chicken. Whatever day that falls on is the night I make stock. Before I go to bed, I ceremoniously dump the carcass and all the pan juices into my large crockpot (not sure of the actual capacity, but it's at least 6 quarts), then I dump all the frozen veggie trimmings on top, and cover everything with pure, filtered water. The only thing close to measuring I do is to make sure I don't over-fill the pot. I add the tiniest pinch of salt and two or three black peppercorns, put the lid on, turn the crockpot on low, and forget about it until the next day. Whenever I get around to it the following morning, I pour the liquid through a fine colander and into 3-cup-capacity Tupperware containers. I use a ladle to press and squeeze every last drop of goodness out of the scraps, then throw the scraps away. Then I label each container and put it in the freezer.

If you are only making vegetable stock, you could make your scraps do double duty by then throwing everything in the compost pile once you've strained your broth. If you are making a stock with meat in it, then throw the scraps away, as animal products are not supposed to go into a compost pile.

The flavor of the stock will not be consistent when made this way, as it would if you followed a recipe, but I have yet to make a batch that didn't taste good. And, I make mine almost for free with hardly any trouble, which is more than I can say for the Barefoot Contessa recipe (although I'm sure hers tastes fantastic). Oh, I do have to confess that I do not include beet scraps. The thought of red or pink stock is just not appealing to me.

And finally, I'll leave you with a link so you can read up on why broth and stock are so very good for for the body. Everyone's grandmother says that if you are sick, you need home-made chicken soup. Well, it turns out there is some actual science behind that old wive's tale. You can read about how good broth is for you here.

Weely Menu and Recipe: V-8 Soup

Here is my dinner menu plan for the coming week, plus my recipe for V-8 Soup. This was originally my mother-in-law's recipe, and it's a good one. There are so many ways to vary it to your taste! The recipe I'm posting here is not her original, but contains my own additions, like fresh root vegetables rather than canned potatoes. I like my soups to be so full of vegetables that it's almost a stew (or a "stewp" as Rachel Ray would say). Recently, I have learned that you should not stir ground beef as it browns. Instead, flip it once so it can brown on both sides, but other than that, leave it alone. My absolute favorite ingredient to add is orzo pasta, but since I'm cutting back on carbs, I've been leaving that out. If you do add pasta or rice, cook it before adding to the soup.

V-8 Soup
1 48-ounce can V-8 Juice
water- half a V-8 can's worth
1 family-size bag frozen soup vegetable medley (or two smaller bags)
1 10-ounce bag frozen sliced okra
1 pound ground beef
1 medium onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 pound fingerling potatoes, washed and diced (I leave the peel on, but you could peel them if desired)
2 large turnips, peeled, tops and root ends removed, diced
olive oil, about a tablespoon, for sauteing the onion and garlic
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until tender and translucent. Add the garlic and saute for 30 seconds more. Add ground beef. Break the beef up into a thin layer, but then do not stir it while it browns! When it is thoroughly brown on one side, turn it over to brown on the other side. This allows it to build up more flavor.  

When beef is browned, add V-8 juice, then fill the can 1/2 way up with water (should be about 24 ounces) and add the water. If using turnips, add them next and bring soup to a boil, then lower the heat and let it simmer for about 15 minutes before adding potatoes and frozen vegetables. If you're skipping the turnips (and you're missing out if you do!), go ahead and add the potatoes and frozen vegetables and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat and let the soup simmer for about 45 minutes, or until veggies are tender. Salt and pepper to taste. V-8 contains quite a bit of sodium, so start out lightly with the salt and add more as needed. If adding cooked pasta or rice, add 10 minutes before the end.


Weekly Menu, December 6th-12th
note: I don't actually plan what meal I'm going to make each day, because it inevitably changes. I just write out six or seven dinner plans, then usually decide each day which one to make. I've linked the recipes when applicable.

Roast Chicken (a la Alice Waters), Creamed Spinach, Orange-Maple glazed Carrots

V-8 Soup

Baked Ziti, Roasted Broccoli

Melissa's Chicken, Arugula-Corn Salad

Lamb Shank, Beet and Pomegranate Salad, Baked Sweet Potato

Broiled Salmon, Buttery Mashed Potatoes and Turnips, Peas