Table Talk: Homemade Turkey Breakfast Sausage

 Uh, is that breakfast sausage or a steaming pile of......?

Isn't it supposed to be in link form?

Can you even call it breakfast sausage at this point?

All good questions.  

To which I will say: 

1) It's supposed to be breakfast sausage but I can see where you'd be confused, 

2) Yes 

and 

3) I have no idea.

I am not sure where I went wrong with the link situation but I have a few ideas.  I bought the tube of frozen ground turkey (What?  It was cheaper, so kill me!)  and it seemed to have quite a bit of liquid in it.  Maybe I should have drained it first or something?  When you buy it from the meat counter, there's usually a pad at the bottom that soaks up all the extra juice and maybe that's a necessity here?  I also used dried buttermilk powder and water as a sub for the buttermilk.  

When it was time to form the links, it seemed way to wet so I added some dried bread crumbs.  It was barely firm enough to form but I was afraid of adding too much bread and just turning them into fried breadsticks with some meat.  Even though I barely got them formed into links, I kept going, thinking that maybe once I started cooking them, they would magically hold together.  Not so much.  They held together well enough until I flipped them.  I was ever-so-careful and the first flip was okay but it seemed the more I cooked them, the less they held together.  I finally gave up and just made a steaming pile of sausage.  Yes, that's the official name I am going with.

 For my family's sake I tried to pretend I meant to make some kind of breakfast hash with it. :)  

It's supposed to look like that, see?  (I'm not sure they believed me either.  Maybe it was because I was laughing maniacally while I was smashing it up.)  

I really liked the flavor of the sausage which surprised me, I was afraid I wouldn't like the spices involved but I did.  I want to try again, but next time, I think I will try the ground turkey from the meat counter and some real buttermilk and hope it goes more smoothly.

Don't let my idiocy deter you from trying the recipe, you might be a sausage-making-whiz!  You can get it at Talesha's blog.  She was our host for the week.  Even though this wasn't a shining moment for me in the kitchen, I liked trying a new recipe and of course I learned some new things.  Like with all of my failures. :)  

Navajo (Indian) Tacos

Where I grew up, we always called them Navajo Tacos, but when we lived in South Dakota, they were Indian Tacos.  It doesn't matter what you call them, they are good.  This is my version of it.  I am not going to claim it's an authentic Navajo or Sioux Taco but it's delicious.  This last time I made them I decided to top them with Pico de Gallo and Guacamole, but I really didn't like the way it all came together.  I think the lime in the two sides really didn't go well with the chili.  In the end, I ended up eating mine with just diced tomatoes and avocados (and, of course, the sour cream, cheese and lettuce).  Sometimes the simpler it is, the better it tastes, I just have to be reminded of that every now and then.  Remember in the chili post when I talked about doubling the batch of chili and freezing half?  I think this would be a great use for the chili in the freezer.  If you don't want to make the scones, I have used frozen, thawed bread dough (Mrs Rhodes) before and they were almost as good. :)

Chili

 A couple people have brought to my attention that I need more healthy recipes on the blog. So I thought I'd post a recipe for chili.  With sour cream and cheese on top. :)  You can leave it off if you find it offensive.  However, I don't find it offensive, I find it lovely.  I really like this chili recipe for a few reasons.  It's really easy, it really fresh tasting and delicious, it's really healthy (if you just eat the chili by itself), it doesn't take a ton of ingredients, and it keeps so well.  Leftover chili is just as delicious, or maybe more so than the first day.  Tonight, we served it with cornbread and can I just say that it's the first cornbread I have made from scratch that I LOVED, but more on that tomorrow.  Chili is the kind of thing that would be good to double the batch and freeze half.  And I think I have a recipe coming up that you can use the frozen half for. ;)

Hamburger Soup

This is a great soup and in our rotation of favorites.   It's really quick, easy and inexpensive.  The original recipe calls for ground beef, but I usually substitute ground turkey.  The recipe is intended to use garden vegetables but I rarely have since we haven't really had a garden.  If you have garden-fresh corn and tomatoes I bet it would be even better.

Hamburger Harvest Soup
Ingredients:
1 lb ground turkey (or ground beef)
1 med onion, chopped
6 cups water
8 beef bullion cubes (or tsps bullion, or substitute water and bullion for beef broth)
2 carrots, chopped
14.5 oz can stewed, diced Italian style tomatoes (or 1.5 cups fresh tomatoes, diced)
2 cups frozen (or fresh) corn
3-4 diced potatoes
2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cumin
3 T sugar
1/2 tsp pepper
Serve with mozzarella or Mexican-style cheese.

Directions
Over med-high heat, brown turkey and onion until turkey is done and onion is tender.  Add remaining ingredients and cook until potatoes are tender.  Salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 8

Great served with Dinner Rolls.

Adapted from The Essential Mormon Cookbook

Spaghetti

Spaghetti is always a big hit at our house.  It's one of my comfort foods and I think I have forced everyone else to love it, like it or not.  I used to buy 3 different kinds of tomatoes and would make sure I simmered the sauce for at least an hour.  While it was good, I realized I didn't have to spend all that extra time or money.