Really Late Wordless Wednesday Post

You have to squeeze the sausage out of the cases. It's the grossest thing in the whole world. Like milking a cow for meat.

Break it up with a wooden spoon. This is not a job for plastic. Unless you like to eat plastic, and then, that's up to you.

Add flour and seasonings. I like a cajun blend, but I'm out. So I went with paprika, garlic powder, white pepper, black pepper, cayenne pepper, and oregano.

and this is what happens when you don't know how to take an "I'm cooking food shot."

You want the flour to kind of brown on the bottom of the pan and stick. There's a fancy French name for this. Means YUMMY. When flour is browned, pour in beer and once cup of water.

Stir until thick, add both stocks and hashbrowns O'brian, bring to a bubble. Simmer ten minutes. In hindsight, I will never put frozen hashbrowns into a bowl again, as they fused into any icy mass that required chiseling. Over a pot. Of steaming, boiling liquid. With Sausage grease. I may have scars.

Bring to a boil. This will thicken as it simmers. Just keep scraping the bottom of the pan as your stirring to get the yummy fancy french word stuff off the pan and into your soup.

If it's not thick enough, add some corn starch to one cup of milk and shake in a tupperware container. Don't ask me how much. About a heap. If you held a gun to my head, I'd say three tablespoons, but you just want the soup thick enough to hold the cheese.

Add the cheese in hand fulls. Again, it's not really a science. More of a taste.

I'd go with about 8 ounces...this time if pressed.

Serve with biscuits...

You can be real cute about that if you want.

And there's your soup. I used a ridiculously dark beer, and got dark soup. It happens. Also, I've written this recipe out on here before. It's good. It's also different every time I make it.

The bottom line is sausage+flour+beer+broth+potatoes+milk+cheese+seasoning= so freaking good. Now, go play with it. Make it your own.

The end of a bad money month...clean out the fridge soup.

It's been a bad money month.

Murphy's law reigns supreme of course. How bad, you ask? Not bad enough that I've lost a single wink of sleep, but we've had a couple of setbacks. A trip to the ER, lost days of work due to illness, bad tires.

Yeah, it's tight this month, so the grocery budget is tighter than it normally is, and I really want to make my grocery budget s-t-r-e-t-c-h.

So, what to make for dinner when I normally would have gone shopping on Friday but want to wait till next Friday?

Refrigerator Soup. It's what's for dinner.

That's what I call it when I produce a pot of soup out of what ever is lying around, and usually the results are so good that my family asks for it again. Of course, I'll never be able to make it again, because, I won't remember what was in the refrigerator, unless I write it down.

So here we are...
I had a lone chicken breast. Well, that doesn't go very far, so we added six strips of bacon. There was about a half a quart of homemade chicken broth, a bag of corn, a half a bag of frozen roasted red peppers diced, leftover pierogi filling and I'm never out of flour...

So, soup.

Start with the bacon- saute it in a bit of butter till extra crispy. Then save a bit of the drippings in the pot and drain the rest. Saute the chicken, diced, in the bacon fat, then add the red peppers and a diced onion. The heat is on medium at this point-you don't want the bacon fat to blacken. Sprinkle the whole thing with flour to make a paste, and pour in the chicken stock, corn, leftover potatoes, and one raw potato, diced. Season with tarragon, chives, salt and pepper.

Top with shredded cheddar if you've got it, and thank God for plentiful food, even when money is tight.

Box mixes: The enemy of frugal cooks every where

I remember the first time I ever cooked.

Ever.

My mother had made her famous meltaway meat. Of this, I still quiver in fear. The lumpy, tasteless mass of protein quivered like jello, the texture resembled canned dog food. I'm not entirely sure what she did to it that made it taste so...tasteless, but I do know it often involved me scrubbing out the crockpot for sometimes days on end, only to have her repeat the mess the moment I had managed to chip the remains from the walls of her ceramic petri dish, I mean, crockpot. Ugh.

My moment...she had come down with a "migraine" and needed to lay down. She needed me to "finish off dinner."

I was happier than a pig in, well, you know.

Laying on the counter, a packet of lipton alfredo noodles.

I put on my serious face. This was the big leagues. The moment that everyone tasted MY noodles. Oh, I could hardly wait.

I read the directions, then reread them. I followed them EXACTLY. Measuring the margarine, milk, and water as though my life depended on it.

Did you see my mistake? Because to this day, I don't. I followed the directions on the package, only to have my mother have a panic attack because I used margarine. Evidently, it was optional, (in those days, that was NOT printed on the directions.) and EXPENSIVE

As a (much) older cook, I wonder why we even had those packets. Even on sale they are ridiculously priced for what they are. A little bullion, a couple of seasonings, a four hundred percent mark up. It's scary what people will pay good money for.

On one of my favorite sites there is a certain amount of devotion to a certain meal product hawked by a four fingered hand. There are whole threads devoted to a favorite flavor...and again, I wonder why. Especially when I see "Italian Shells" ranks around the most popular flavors.

Seriously?

Ok, besides the ick factor, (have you READ the ingredients) and the price factor, (upwards of two dollars for barely three portions), Italian Shells? The easiest thing on the the planet, and, possibly the cheapest.

Check out my remake:

pasta
1 lb ground beef or sausage
1/2 lb whole wheat short pasta
2 C premade pasta sauce, or season a 16 oz can of tomato puree to taste.
2 C water

Brown beef or sausage and drain. Add sauce and water, bring to a boil, add the pasta. Return to a boil, simmering for 7 minutes. Do not cover. Let stand five minutes.

At this point, I usually sprinkle some shredded cheese on it and call it a day. However, I have the feeling the cheese sauce makes it for some people, so...

take 1/2 C milk and blend with 1 tsp cornstarch until smooth. Add 1/2 teaspoon garlic, bring to a boil. Stir in two to four tablespoons of parmesan cheese. Taste and add salt and pepper as desired. Drizzle over pasta.

Serve as you would your favorite box mix. Gloat in the fact that it cost less than half the price. Yay, YOU!

Do you have a favorite box mix you'd like a cheaper alternative to? Let me know in the comments!

And I digress...What's for dinner?

One day, many years ago, when Mr. Lovinangels and I were young, and broke, and hungry, I went into the kitchen to see about some food. I had exactly five things in my refrigerator- italian sausage, cheddar cheese, milk, potatoes, and beer.
Did someone say soup?

The recipe has morphed, time and time again, as we quickly learned never to be THAT broke, and that planning meals is a positive thing. This is the final product, the one I send to potlucks, etc.
I have to say, this is the one thing my family has asked for over and over. It's not a fussy recipe, either, as long as you follow the basic theory. Of course, you could do it without the sausage, or even the beer, but why would you want to?

4 tbsp butter or oil
1/2 C flour
1 capful of cajun seasoning.
1 lb bulk sausage, or remove sausage from casings.
half a bag of hash browns o' brian
1 quart of chicken broth
1 quart of water
1 bottle good quality dark beer (if you are insisting upon using light, please find a different recipe)
1 good couple of glugs of milk.
half a pound of nice, white, sharp cheddar, shredded.

Melt the butter or heat the oil in the soup pot, add sausage, breaking up with wooden spoon, until cooked. Add flour and continue stirring, until a blonde roux has formed around the sausage.

Shut off the heat if you have a gas stove, and pour in the beer, stirring constantly. Turn heat back on and stir, stir, stir, until the beer begins to thicken.
add the hash browns, seasoning, stock, and as much of the water as you need to just cover the hashbrowns, then pour in the milk, just enough to color it creamy. Continue stirring until it's nice and thick, and taste. Season with salt and pepper and lower heat, to a nice simmer. Now, begin adding the cheese, slowly, one handful at a time, allowing each handful to melt almost completely before adding the next. Taste after the third handful, and adjust seasonings. You can add all the cheese or a portion, and then let it set for a couple of minutes so you don't burn the roof of your mouth off.
Serve with more shredded cheese to pass.