Sausage, Potatoes and Cabbage Skillet

Ive been doing a lot of recipes lately haven't I?? Im just getting older and more forgetful...and I just want to document things so I don't forget them...LOL And, my kids have somewhere to go to find out the burning questions of "how did mom cook that?"

Please note: I dont have exact measurements on things because Im a visual cook and I season to taste. Please use your own judgement when using these measurements....if you can understand them. LOL Also have fun with this dish! Add stuff and take stuff away! Im planning on putting a green pepper in next time. 

Today its sausage, potatoes and cabbage skillet.
This is a spicy hot dish....adjust according to your taste.

Cut up 2ish lbs of smoked kielbasa sausage into 1/4 inch pieces and throw them in a big pan.
Put 3 tbs of garlic in...more or less depending on your taste for garlic. Its healthy and tastes good. You should look up its bennies. 
Put in a tbs of crushed red pepper(ish...depends on how hot you like it)
and a couple tbs of celery salt.
4 or 5 glubs of red wine.

Let all that cook for a few mins. Long enough for the alcohol to burn off.

While your waiting, scrub 3 medium sized potatoes and slice them thinly, and put them in the pan and stir. If you don't cut your potatoes thin, you will be eating raw potatoes, which, you can fix that too by throwing them in the microwave before putting them in the pan.

This is what it should look like at this point.

Then grab your med sized head of cabbage and clean that up and cut it up into oneish inch sized pieces. 

When you think its time, put the cut cabbage in and 8ish glubs of worcestershire sauce in and stir. If you have some way of covering your pan, do that and let it cook on mediumish heat for 15ish mins (lots of "ishes" isnt there?) But I don't have any way of covering this pan...the hazards of cooking with cast iron, so its gonna take a little longer for me.

When your cabbage is tender....serve. I served mine when it was a bit on the crunchy side, we like it like that tho.

YUM! 

TTFN 

TSM Stainless Steel 5-Tray Dehydrator Model D5~~ Unboxing

YAY! Lookie what I got today!!

Yep I got two boxes! LOL But hold on....lets find out whats IN those boxes.

Im just trying to do an exciting build up....did it work??

Mr. H and I have been researching dehydrators for a few months now trying to figure out which one to get. We went thro a few different brands and cussed and discussed our two top pics and decided on this one.

Here were my requirements:
It must have a timer.
It needs to be square with a fan in the back for more even airflow.

Here were Mr. H's requirements:
It must last a long damn time. Which means it needs to be stainless steel to prevent rusting, and I'm sure there were other mechanical baloney he was looking for that I don't know about. Hence the reason I sent him on this search. lol

One thing we agreed upon was that it must be made in the good ol' US of A.

Whats in these boxes is the....

TSM Stainless Steel 5-Tray Dehydrator Model D5~ This is a TSM product and is a division of The Sausage Maker Inc. 

This is the unboxing of this dehydrator. I went looking for one of these for this brand/model and couldn't find one...so I'm gonna put one out there. Here we go! Click on any of the pictures to embiggin. 

Options selected were: 

Stainless 1/4-inch Holes

We bought one non stick drying sheet and one stainless steel solid sheet tray to try them out and see if I wanted more. I'm planning on drying wet stuff so I thought I would need them. We will see tho.

Opening of the boxes: 

The other box had my drying sheet and solid tray in it. 

When we dig into the box a bit more, we find......

Ok the stuff you see on the top of the dehydrator is a mirror image of, embarrassingly, my ceiling. Seriously, this thing is a mirror. 

Aside from the embarrassing parts that had nothing to do with the company......

This thing is packed very well to avoid any damage at. all. Let's take it out of the box. 

That white package that's laying up against the dehydrator is the shelving....the dehydrator was sitting on them. Some assembly required. LOL

Now for a view of the inside. 

The way you get the door open is to slide it up and off. My son is holding it for me to take a shot of it. That's his arm. 

But straight out of the box, this is what it looks like inside. 

And then you take those shelves laying on the side of the box in picture 3 and place them inside and these are what you place your shelves on. 

And slide your shelves right in..........

  

Put your handle on, plug it in, and your dehydrator is ready to use! And getting it to this point took no time at all...(unless you're taking pictures along the way.) And super simple! 

The literature that comes with it is an operating manual and included in the manual is Food Drying Guides for fruit, veggies, and jerky. It also has a couple paragraphs on "Food Storage", "Reconstitution", and "Cleaning the unit". 

Good, cuz one thing I can see I'm gonna have problems with is keeping it clean. Just unboxing it left an amazing amount of fingerprints on it. Meh....its alright, I can handle it. This gives me a reason to knit a cozy for it!!! LOL 

I do wish they would have put a book or at least a leaflet dedicated to dehydrating foods. I will be looking for one now.

First up in this dehydrator is onions. Lets see how this works.......

TTFN      

(Pork)Wiener Schnitzel Recipe

I came across Wiener Schnitzel a year ago and made it and it was WONDERFUL! My German friend gave me her recipe and I wanted to make it today and I couldnt find it!!!!

AHHHH!!

So Im gonna make this one and write it down here so I dont lose it and so yall can possibly share in my goodness.

Disclaimer: This is by far the original version...largely due to my using pork...but it is amazingly good!!

First you have 3 bowls:
One of them has 4 eggs milk and lemon juice in it.
One has flour, paprika, season salt and fresh ground pepper
and one has Italian breadcrumbs in it.

Then you have your pan with oil in it getting hot.

Take your pork tenderloin and dip them in these bowls, flour first, then egg mixture and then breadcrumbs. 

(sorry the pic is out of order.)

Then put them in the pan and cook them 3-4 min on one side, turn, 3-4 mins on the other side. You really don't want to turn them more than once. 

Take them out of the pan and put them on some paper towels and..........

Throw some potatoes and a veggie or a salad with this and your gonna be stuffed after supper!! 

Check it out yall...I was asked to add this recipe to the MyCityCuisine wiki resource! WHOOO! Click on that button right there to check it out!

TTFN

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins

I totally got a wild hair and wanted some Lemon Poppyseed Muffins. This is my SIL's fault really, shes the one that took me to Penzey's where I saw poppyseeds and its all downhill from there.

The problem? I've never made them before and so I had to go on a search for a recipe. There are no shortages of recipes for these things so I combined a few of them and came up with this one. I'm gonna write this here so I don't forget what I did cuz my boys ate every last molecule of the ones I made today and asked "Is there more?" LOL

Lemon Poppyseed Muffins


2 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of white sugar
2 tsp of baking powder
1/2 tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbs poppyseeds
2 tsp lemon zest~ or more if you like more lemony taste. (I used two mediumish sized lemons)

What is "lemon zest" Melissa? I'm glad you asked....its that bright yellow outside of the lemon. Get you a grater (or if you're really fancy...grab your microplane) and use the smallest holes and just grate the bright yellow outside part of the lemon. You dont want the white under the bright yellow. Just the bright yellow.

Mix all that stuff up in one bowl and set it aside, you should have something that looks like this......

......and then, grab your measuring cup and put all this next stuff in and mix it right there in the measuring cup. (less dishes)

Measure 1/2 cup buttermilk and add....
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup of canola or veggie oil
1 egg
1 tsp of vanilla extract

"Well I dont have any buttermilk Melissa." you say.....well if you have milk and vinegar or lemon juice...yes you do.
Get you one cup of milk and add one tbs of white vinegar or lemon juice and let it set for 5 mins. Voila...buttermilk substitute.
Or....
Here are some other buttermilk substitutions I found over at Good Life Eats:  Kitchen Tip: Homemade Buttermilk Substitute

Anyway...after you've mixed all this stuff up, you should have 1 1/2 cups of stuff, and look like this.....

Then you take your dry mixture and your wet mixture and mix them together...

Don't get crazy with the stirring, you want some lumps.

Then put your mixture in your prepared muffin pan. You can use papers but I didn't. I made some big ones and some bite sized ones. 

In case yall didnt know...just a little tip, if you use a ice cream scoop, you will fill them evenly and neatly. 

Bake these in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 mins...start checking for doneness after about 15mins. 

While those are baking, take your lemons you zested earlier, and cut them open and squeeze 2-3 tbs of juice and mix the juice in one cup of powdered sugar. (while your waiting check out my post on sugars)  

When they come out of the oven, take them out of the pan and drizzle your glaze over them.

YUMMMMM! I would love it if you guys had any variations you would like to share! And would love it if yall make these you come back and let me know how it went! 

ENJOY!

TTFN

Cabbage Rolls

Cabbage rolls tonight!! YAY! 

I make a crapload of these and then freeze them in bags of 4 to put in hubby's lunch. By the time he's ready to eat lunch, they are thawed and ready to eat. Throw a couple pieces of fruit in lunch box and hes good to go.

That is of course, depending on how hungry the boys are at suppertime......LOL

I was asked to share the recipe, sooo here ya go! Please understand that these are approximate amounts of all the ingredients, I am a visual cook. I will be more accurate next time I cook this and add the correct amounts. I will also take more pictures and add them.

Here is the recipe to make this yumminess for yourself.

When you get up in the morning, or approximately 5ish hours before you want to prepare your rolls, you will need to put out some "Rhodes" frozen dinner rolls to rise. Or whatever brand you want to use. I used to make them myself, but I only do that on rare occasions anymore.

For the stuffing, you will need:

1 1/2lbs of Hamburger/1/2lb sausage mixture.

1 whole large onion cut chunky

3 tbs of greek seasoning.

2 tbs of paprika

parsley chopped

(I suggest you play around with seasonings. And then come back and share so I can try them too!)

Put all that stuff above in a really big pan and cook it. You will need the bigness later. 

In the meantime....turn the oven on 350sh, clean and cut your cabbage into large chunks, about 1 inch pieces. 

Once your meat mixture is cooked, put the cabbage in and stir.(this is where the bigness comes in) Once the cabbage has cooked down, cook just a little bit longer to let flavors mix up.

Turn burner off and get you a place close by to start to fill these rolls and get you a big cookie sheet out.

Put a pile of flour down and then take one risen roll and put it on the flour and flatten it, flip it, pick it up and stretch it out on all sides. (sorry I cant describe it better....just visualize a pizza man throwing the dough up in the air and it stretching out....LOLOL) 

Place a bit of mixture in the center of your flattened roll and bring up the roll around the filling on all sides. Squeeze the edges of the roll together around the filling and put the roll, squeezed side down on the cookie sheet. 

Continue with remaining rolls and bake in a 350ish oven for 20ish mins or until golden brown. Be careful because the flour will deceive you as to how brown they are. 

When you take them out, brush them with melted butter and serve. A nice salad goes well with these. 

I KNOW this would be better with pictures to help explain, and I will add pictures next time I cook these. I hope you understand the recipe tho....if yall have any questions...just ask.

TTFN