15 October 2010

101 ways with sausages, ok 3 ways with sausages . . .

Greetings all,
Now i'm a pretty terrible at cooking dinner.  I can bake for parties, cakes, slices, biscuits, muffins . . . make fantastic gourmet sandwiches & prepare anything you throw at me to chop, clean, mix . . . my first paid job when i was 12 was as a kitchen hand!!  It's just when heat is introduced, it all goes pear shaped.  I do my best to steam vegetables & not murder good cuts of meat, so my children get something edible & healthy for their growing bodies.  There is no 'made with love' at dinner time here . . . sewing it is not!! 
See, when handsome soldier goes away, we miss him & HIS COOKING!!  My husband can cook anything, with flavour, he finds it relaxing, enjoyable, a challenge.  He can make a sponge rise to perfection & roast a leg of lamb to juicey tenderness.  Me, when i cook, i am also supervising  homework, directing children doing chores & cleaning up, at the same time.  There are only so many hours between walking in the door after a long trip home from school & their bedtime.  Don't tell me about preparing vegetables during the day, i do ALL that, i even plan a menu, this is not spontaneous-last-minute-cooking!!  When you lack skills, inclination & passion, it's really hard to get the task right, or . . . tastey.  I know, all you great cooks must think i'm incredibly slack, my mother was a chef, oh the shame of it all.
To add to my kitchen nightmare . . . i froze 3kg of sausages in one huge lump.  I know, i didn't count them out & divide into family portions like normal, i just froze without any consideration for how, when or why they would be used . . . so i had to be inventive to disguise 3 sausage based meals in a row.  I actually view it as dinner anarchy now, rebelling against every other facet of extreme organisation i had going on during my 9 months of solo parenting this year.
First night was BBQ sausages & salad, easy, happy children.
Second night was . . . sausage mince, toss in herbs, tomato paste, onion & carrot, da dah, sausage rolls to toss in the oven on a freezing wet Spring evening.  Extra delicious with Lynwood Chilly Tomato Jam which i picked up at Shop Handmade this week.
On the third night of sausage mince, my true love made for me . . . ground up bread rolls = breadcrumbs for rissoles.  So we had homemade burgers stuffed with salad on a Friday night.
I wonder if Donna Hay could style & photograph sausage mince with any glamour??
Theory of this blog post - count & divide your sausages before freezing!! 
Have great weekends people, Little Athletics has already been cancelled due to rain, so i'm off to the Murrumbateman Field Day (that's a big event in them thar hills on the Barton Highway) & sewing.  Love Posie

9 comments:

Thea said...

If it makes you feel any better, I've frozen meat cuts together too.. we can't be brilliant at everything :) xx

Anonymous said...

my goodness, you did well to get those kidlets to eat sausages three nights in a row. you are my hero. mind you, it doesn't sound like it turned out too badly. have a great weekend.

x

Brenda @ 13 Acres said...

i love your creativity even with a batch of sausages!!! have a great weekend Jennie ;-)

Anonymous said...

I don't like cooking dinner much either - becomes very boring very fast when you have to do it on your own every night.

Enjoy the Field Day, hope it stays dry for you!

Kelli

by marie-nicole said...

Tooo... FUNNY Jennie!!! My husband and I love to cook, but we are not short of disaster stories... I am reading this post to him while he cooks dinner and we're laughing hysterically, so much so we've up our youngest son, OOPS!

Enjoy the Field Day sounds like so much fun!
x

Shay said...

Very timely ! Hubby lost his job this week, so I suspect I'm going to be eating a lot of sausages shortly!

I never thought of gutting them. Great idea.

Kidding about the eating sausages a lot. We're not quite there just yet ...but your ideas are fabulous all the same.

Simone - honeyandfizz said...

Kids love sausages right? I think you are doing well considering how busy you must be. We cant be good at everything! :) Thanks for stopping by my blog xx

~*~ saskia ~*~ said...

Have a crazy fun weekend, creative Posie! xxx

Kylie said...

Hope that you had a great weekend - THanks for the tips on hiding snaggs for three meals:) You did well.

Hope that you had fun at the field day. I so wanted a British Giant Rabbit to come home with me when we went there in our first year in Canberra:)